Install the library

pip install django-db-sanitizer

Add the library to your INSTALLED_APPS in your Django Settings

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'django_db_sanitizer',
)

Creating db_sanitizer.py

Configuration of django-db-sanitizer works similarly to the configuration of the Django admin site.

To use django-db-sanitizer for one of your Django apps, create a db_sanitizer.py file into said Django app just as you would create an admin.py file for the Django admin site.

Model and field declarations

Inside the db_sanitizer.py file of your app, you must explicitly register which fields of which models will be sanitized using an explicitly declared Sanitizer class.

In the following example, the notes text field of the Profile class will be sanitized using the LoremIpsumSanitizer sanitizing strategy, filling the contents of the field with Lorem Ipsum text.

from django_db_sanitizer import sanitizer_registry, LoremIpsumSanitizer

from my_app.models import Profile

sanitizer_registry.register(Profile, ["notes"], LoremIpsumSanitizer)

Customizing the sanitizing process

django-db-sanitizer is meant to be easy to extend. It is easily possible to override or extend classes from django-db-sanitizer to:

• Filter querysets on which the sanitizing process is applied

• Modify existing Sanitizer classes to alter their behavior

• Add your own new Sanitizer classes

• Add your own Updater classes to control how values are saved to the database

• And more…

Please refer to the test_app in django-db-sanitizer’s test_project within the repository for a number of examples on how to achieve this.

Running the sanitizing process

Currently, the only way to run the sanitizing process is to use the included Django command, like so:

python manage.py sanitize_my_database

This command does not use or require any arguments for the time being.

Please note that the sanitizing process is irreversible. It is recommended to run django-db-sanitizer on a copy of your application and database running on your local machine.