django-describe

django-describe generates a report on the run-time configuration of a Django site after everything has been loaded or created and initialised- generating lists of installed apps, models registered with the Django Admin, urls served, etc. The reports are generated in json format.

The reports are the metadata for a site. You can use the reports for anything, but the reason django-describe was created was to feed the information into an LLM to generate tests.

Usage

Generate a complete report using the following:

python manage.py describe

Reports, by default, are written to the console, but you can save them to a file either by redirecting the output, or using the --output option:

python manage,py describe --output metadata/description.json

Output

django-describe generates the report in JSON format:

{
    "apps": [
        "django.contrib.admin",
        "django.contrib.auth",
        "django.contrib.contenttypes",
        "django.contrib.sessions",
        "django.contrib.messages",
        "django.contrib.staticfiles",
        "describe"
    ],
    "models": [
        "admin.logentry",
        "auth.permission",
        "auth.group",
        "auth.user",
        "contenttypes.contenttype",
        "sessions.session"
    ],
    "settings": {
        "ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES": {},
        "ADMINS": [],
        "ALLOWED_HOSTS": [],
        "APPEND_SLASH": true,
        "AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS": [
            "django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend"
        ],
        ...
    }
}

Note: The report normally does not include information from dependencies. They were only included as the django-describe app does not include any models.

Install

You can use either pip or uv to download the package from PyPI and install it into a virtualenv:

pip install django-describe

or:

uv add django-describe

Update INSTALLED_APPS in your Django setting:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    "describe",
]

Demo

If you check out the code from the repository there is a fully functioning, but minimal Django site, which you can used to see how the management command works.

git clone git@github.com:StuartMacKay/django-describe.git
cd django-describe

Create the virtual environment:

uv venv

Activate it:

source .venv/bin/activate

Install the requirements:

uv sync

Run the database migrations:

python manage.py migrate

Now, run the management command to generate the report:

python manage.py describe --output metadata.json

Project Information

• Issues: https://github.com/StuartMacKay/django-describe/issues
• Repository: https://github.com/StuartMacKay/django-describe/issues

The app is tested on Python 3.12+, and officially supports Django 5.2 LTS, and later versions.

License

django-describe is released under the terms of the MIT license.