django-shellcraft 0.1.1

Rails-style console ergonomics for Django — pretty printing, model shortcuts, and schema inspection

django-shellcraft

Rails-style console ergonomics for Django — pretty printing, model shortcuts, and schema inspection.

Built for developers migrating from Ruby on Rails who miss the rails console experience.

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Installation

pip install django-shellcraft

Add to INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    "shellcraft",
]

Usage

python manage.py shellcraft

All models are auto-imported into the shell namespace. IPython is used when available, falling back to the standard Python REPL.

Note: shellcraft refuses to start when DEBUG = False as a production safety guard.

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Features

Model shortcuts

All shortcuts are injected as classmethods/instance methods at shell startup. Raw User.objects.all() is unchanged — pretty printing only happens through shellcraft methods.

Method	Equivalent
User.find(1)	User.objects.get(pk=1)
User.all()	User.objects.all() + pretty print
User.where(is_active=True)	User.objects.filter(...) + pretty print
User.first()	User.objects.first() + pretty print
User.last()	User.objects.last() + pretty print
User.count()	User.objects.count()
user.update(email="[e-mail]")	sets attrs + save()
user.destroy()	user.delete()
User.fields()	colored schema inspection
tables()	list all models across all apps

Pretty printing

Single record:

#<User:0x7f3a> {
    :id         => 1,
    :username   => "siva",
    :email      => "[e-mail]",
    :is_active  => true,
    :created_at => 2024-01-15 10:30:00,
}

Multiple records:

[
    [0] #<User:0x7f3a> {
            :id       => 1,
            :username => "siva",
        },
    [1] #<User:0x7f3b> {
            :id       => 2,
            :username => "kumar",
        }
]
2 records

Color mapping:

Type	Color
int, float	blue
str	yellow
True	green
False, None	red
datetime, date	cyan
field types	cyan
record index [0]	gray

Schema inspection

User.fields()

User {
    :id          AutoField
    :username    CharField
    :email       CharField
    :is_active   BooleanField
    :created_at  DateTimeField
    :group_id    ForeignKey     null: true
}

List all tables

tables()

  auth.User
  auth.Group
  auth.Permission
  myapp.Post
  myapp.Comment

5 tables

Manual pretty printing

ap() is available directly for any model instance or queryset:

ap(User.objects.filter(is_staff=True))

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Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• Django 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, or 5.0
• django-extensions >= 3.0

Optional: ipython for an enhanced shell experience.

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Development

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/django-shellcraft
cd django-shellcraft
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

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License

MIT