django-keygen 0.1.0

django-keygen is a Django management command utility designed to securely generate cryptographic secret keys.

django-keygen is a Django management command utility for securely generating cryptographic secret keys and passwords, and optionally writing them into your project’s environment (.env) files automatically.

Detailed documentation will be available in the “docs” directory.

Installation

Install via pip:

pip install django-keygen

Or install the latest version directly from GitHub:

pip install git+https://github.com/mouhib-Sellami/django-keygen.git

Quick start

1. Add django_keygen to your INSTALLED_APPS:

   INSTALLED_APPS = [
       ...,
       'django_keygen',
   ]

Commands Overview

django-keygen provides three management commands:

Command	Purpose
keygen	Generate secret keys and/or passwords into a named .env file. The recommended all-in-one command.
generate_django_secret	Dedicated command for generating a single DJANGO_SECRET_KEY and optionally writing it to an env file via an interactive or flag-driven flow.
generate_password	Interactive terminal interface for generating and tweaking secure passwords.

---

1. keygen — Unified Key & Password Generator

The keygen command is the recommended way to generate one or more secret keys and/or passwords and write them into an environment file in a single step. Variable names are passed directly as arguments, so each generated value is stored under the name you choose.

Positional arguments:

• SECRET [SECRET ...]

  One or more variable names to generate a Django secret key for (e.g. SECRET_KEY API_KEY). Each name receives its own independently generated cryptographic key.

Flags:

• --passwords PASSWORDS [PASSWORDS ...], -p

  One or more variable names to generate a secure password for instead of a Django secret key (e.g. -p DB_PASSWORD REDIS_PASSWORD).

• --file FILE, -f

  Path to the env file, relative to BASE_DIR (default: .env). If the file does not exist, the command offers to create it.

• --append

  Update the existing file in place rather than recreating it from scratch. Without this flag the file is fully rewritten (all previous content is preserved but reformatted alongside the new values). Prompts a confirmation warning because replacing an active SECRET_KEY invalidates all existing sessions, tokens, and signed cookies.

• --no-input

  Skip all confirmation prompts. Useful for automated deployments, Docker entrypoints, and CI/CD pipelines.

Examples:

# Generate SECRET_KEY and write it to .env (recreates the file)
python manage.py keygen SECRET_KEY

# Generate two secret keys into a specific file, no prompts
python manage.py keygen SECRET_KEY API_KEY --file .env.production --no-input

# Generate a secret key and two passwords into .env.local, appending
python manage.py keygen SECRET_KEY --passwords DB_PASSWORD REDIS_PASSWORD \
    --file .env.local --append

# Generate only passwords (no secret keys)
python manage.py keygen --passwords DB_PASSWORD --file .env

---

2. generate_django_secret — Dedicated Secret Key Command

The generate_django_secret command is dedicated to generating a single Django secret key stored under the DJANGO_SECRET_KEY variable. Run it without any flags to simply print a key to the terminal, or add --append to write it to an env file.

When writing to a file, the command either accepts a path via --file or launches an interactive file-selection menu that scans your project for existing .env* files.

Flags:

• --append

  Write the generated key to an environment file. Without this flag the key is only printed to stdout — no files are touched. Prompts a confirmation warning because replacing a live SECRET_KEY invalidates all existing sessions, tokens, and signed cookies.

• --file FILE, -f

  Directly specify the env file to update (e.g. -f .env.production), bypassing the interactive selection menu. If the file does not exist it is created automatically. Only used together with --append.

• --no-input

  Suppress all interactive prompts, menus, and risk warnings. Useful for automated deployments and CI/CD pipelines.

Examples:

# Print a new secret key to the terminal only (no file changes)
python manage.py generate_django_secret

# Interactively choose which env file to update
python manage.py generate_django_secret --append

# Write directly to a specific file, no prompts
python manage.py generate_django_secret --append --no-input -f .env.local

After running, update your settings.py to read the key from the environment:

import os
SECRET_KEY = os.environ.get('DJANGO_SECRET_KEY')

---

3. generate_password — Interactive Password Generator

The generate_password command launches an interactive terminal session for generating and refining secure passwords. After each password is shown, you can regenerate it or adjust the composition settings without restarting the command.

Flags (set initial defaults; all can be changed interactively):

• --length LENGTH, -len

  Desired password length (default: 12).

• --letters

  Include lowercase letters (a–z).

• --uppercase

  Include uppercase letters (A–Z).

• --numbers

  Include numerical digits (0–9).

• --symbol

  Include symbols and punctuation characters.

• --secure

  Shortcut that forces uppercase letters, numbers, symbols, and a minimum length of 20. Overrides individual composition flags.

Examples:

# Launch with defaults (12 characters, no composition constraints)
python manage.py generate_password

# Start with a longer length and reconfigure interactively
python manage.py generate_password --length 16

# Instantly generate a highly secure 20-character password
python manage.py generate_password --secure

---

Programmatic Usage

The underlying password generator can be imported directly into your own Django apps — useful for custom registration flows, invitation tokens, or background tasks:

from django_keygen.core.passwords import generate_password

# Generate a secure password with specific character sets
new_password = generate_password(
    length=14,
    use_uppercase=True,
    use_numbers=True,
    use_symbols=True,
)

# Use it in your application logic
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
user = User.objects.create_user(username='johndoe', email='[e-mail]')
user.set_password(new_password)
user.save()

---

License

django-keygen is released under the MIT License.

Copyright (c) 2026 Mouhib Sellami

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

See the LICENSE file in the repository root for the full license text, or visit: https://github.com/mouhib-Sellami/django-keygen/blob/main/LICENSE