Introducing virtualenvwrapper-django

I recently took one of my previous posts entitled "Never Have to Type "python manage.py" with Django Again", and combined it with another bash function to auto set DJANGO_MODULE_SETTINGS by interrogating a Django project's directory. I then rolled everything together into github as

virtualenvwrapper-django

Its a little rough I admit, and I welcome any feedback for improvements.  As a result, I'm now able to run commands like the following anywhere once I have my virtual environment loaded.

(spock)jbisbee@tacquito:~/src/spock$ manage dbshell
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 95
Server version: 5.5.31-0ubuntu0.12.04.2 (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql>

Edit: I've gotten some feedback and I realize I didn't sell the real reason behind dynamically setting the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE variable. I use Django at work and we have moved from the generic one file settings.py to a settings directory which looks something like this

  settings/
    base.py
    dev.py           # imports from base.py
    test.py          # imports from base.py
    production.py    # imports from base.py
    jbisbee.py       # imports from dev.py

This way you can have cascading Django settings with overrides at multiple levels. This bash function I wrote finds the settings directory and will set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE to the user's specific dev settings (or dev if the user can't be found)

DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=projectname.settings.jbisbee

This way in jbisbee.py I can override my database, turn on crazy debugging, or do anything else I want and be able to commit those settings without affecting others.

Disclaimer: If you manage your Django project's settings differently let me know. I'd love to make the determine_django_module_settings more flexible and patches are more than welcome!

Never Have to Type "python manage.py" with Django Again

I got very quickly got tired making sure I was in the right directory and typing python manage.py. I found django-shortcuts but didn't like the fact that it only mapped a handful of the commands and I wanted access to everything manage.py could do.

I then briefly considered creating a bash function that would determine manage.py's location on every invocation but figured that was silly and decided I might as leverage virtualenv's virtual environment and as Ron Popiel says, "You set it and forget it!"

It only took a minute of poking to find the postactivate hook file within my ~/.virtualenvs directory. Below is the fruit of my labor.

#!/bin/bash
# ~/.virtualenvs/postactive
# This hook is run after every virtualenv is activated.
VIRTUAL_ENV_NAME=$(basename $VIRTUAL_ENV)
SRC_DIR="$HOME/src"
if [ -d "$SRC_DIR/$VIRTUAL_ENV_NAME" ]
then
    MANAGE_PY=$(find "$SRC_DIR/$VIRTUAL_ENV_NAME" -name "manage.py" -type f)
    if [ -e "$MANAGE_PY" ]
    then
        alias django="python $MANAGE_PY"
    else
        unalias django
    fi
else
    unalias django
fi

The end result is that I have a new django alias that will work anywhere and act as though I typed python manage.py

jbisbee@beni:~$ workon django-tutorial
(django-tutorial)jbisbee@beni:~$ alias | grep django
alias django='python /Users/jbisbee/src/django-tutorial/mysite/manage.py'
(django-tutorial)jbisbee@beni:~$

Disclaimer: I'm making a big assumption here that the virtualenv name you're using is identical to the name of the project you're working on. It's a pretty big assumption so I apologize if it does't work right out of the box for you.