Django Debug Requests & Responses (DDRR)

Inspect Django development traffic directly in your console. DDRR logs request and response metadata, headers, and available bodies, with optional JSON and XML pretty-printing. Supports Python 3.11–3.14 and Django 5.2–6.0.

Warning: DDRR is intended only for trusted development environments. It logs headers—including authorization and cookie headers—and bodies without redaction. Do not enable it where this data or the resulting logs may be exposed to untrusted users.

• Request and response headers
• Request and response bodies when available
• Optional JSON and XML pretty-printing
• Colored output
• Synchronous and asynchronous middleware support
• Minimal setup
• No extra dependencies

Installation

1. $ pip install ddrr
   

2. Add "ddrr" to INSTALLED_APPS

3. Insert "ddrr.middleware.DebugRequestsResponses" first in MIDDLEWARE

Done! When you run runserver, you'll see requests and responses, including headers and available bodies.

Example output

To adjust DDRR's logging behavior, read on...

Customization

import logging

DDRR = {
    "ENABLE_REQUESTS": True,  # enable request logging
    "ENABLE_RESPONSES": True,  # enable response logging
    "LEVEL": "DEBUG",  # ddrr log level
    "PRETTY_PRINT": False,  # pretty-print JSON and XML
    "REQUEST_HANDLER": logging.StreamHandler(),  # request log handler
    "RESPONSE_HANDLER": logging.StreamHandler(),  # response log handler
    "ENABLE_COLORS": True,  # enable colors if terminal supports it
    "LIMIT_BODY": None,  # limit request/response body output to X chars
}

Output safety

DDRR renders terminal control characters as visible escape sequences. Newlines inside single-line fields such as paths and headers are escaped. Body text keeps its original indentation for easy copying; lines beginning with DDRR's reserved <- or -> markers receive a leading backslash to prevent forged log entries.

Pretty-printing

By default, pretty-printing is disabled. Set DDRR["PRETTY_PRINT"] to True to enable it.

Pretty-printing of JSON and XML uses the Python standard library and requires no external dependencies.

Limitations

• Request bodies that Django has already consumed are shown as unavailable.
• Streaming response bodies are not consumed and are shown as <streaming>.
• Bodies that are not valid UTF-8 are shown using Python's bytes representation.
• LIMIT_BODY, when configured, truncates request and response bodies.

How it works internally

The middleware ddrr.middleware.DebugRequestsResponses sends request and response objects to separate loggers. DDRR's formatters turn them into fixed, human-readable output. By default, this is shown in your console, but you can configure the handlers to send it elsewhere.

Similar projects

• Django Debug Toolbar

Example application

Run the bundled example from the repository root:

$ uv run python example/manage.py runserver

The index page links to JSON, XML, binary, streaming, and terminal-control examples.

Development and contributions

PRs are always welcome!

For hacking on DDRR, make sure you are familiar with:

• mise
• act
• actionlint
• Ruff
• ty
• uv
• pre-commit
• pytest

Set up environment

Install the locked tool versions using mise, sync the project environment using uv, then install the pre-commit hooks. mise automatically creates and activates the project's .venv when entering the repository.

$ mise install
$ uv sync
$ uv run pre-commit install

The pre-commit hooks will, among other things, use Ruff to lint and format Python code and ty to check types. The full pre-commit configuration exists in .pre-commit-config.yaml.

GitHub Actions

With Docker running, run the GitHub Actions workflow locally using act:

$ mise run act

Pass additional act options after --, for example mise run act -- --list. Workflow files are also checked with actionlint by pre-commit.

Type checking

Run ty using the current Python interpreter and project environment:

$ ty check

Running tests

Run tests using the current Python interpreter and currently installed Django version.

$ uv run pytest

Run tests with every supported Python and Django combination:

$ uv run tox --colored no