django on AWS with multiple settings file - django

Question

Well, I had one setting file before and it was working perfectly both in local and AWS of course with both the database configuration in one setting file. When ever I use to push my code on AWS I would comment my local db configuration and then push. So for sure, that's annoying. I can't comment and uncomment constantly both the database configuration in one file.
Therefore, I decided to have 2 setting files. one for the local and the other for AWS.
Once I pulled the code into AWS server and run migrations
python manage.py migrate --settings=settings.staging
It worked and migrated. By the way, this is the setting file which resides my RDS configuration. Now the moment I hit the endpoints via postmant the output is as
OperationalError at /account/v1/login
could not connect to server: Connection refused
Is the server running on host "localhost" (127.0.0.1) and accepting
TCP/IP connections on port 5432?
means it is still reading the default settings file. How come I make the server run this particular staging setting file. Do I have to declare it on nginx, supervisor or gunicorn?
I'm using these 3 services as well.
Below is my settings file for staging.
from .base import *
# --------------- AWS RDS ---------------
DATABASES = {
'default': {
# 'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
# 'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
'NAME': 'db name here',
'HOST': 'RDS host here',
'USER': 'postgres',
'PASSWORD': 'pass here',
'PORT': '5432'
}
}
This is my complete staging.py file. which only have this while the rest of the setting is being imported from base.py which is a default setting file. Also it has the local settings.
Any recommendations?
This is also what I've tried.
import socket
hostname = socket.gethostname()
if hostname == "staging":
from settings.staging import *
Thank you

Answer 1

The way I solved this issue is using hostnames. We have 1 settings file with all the default settings. We then import specific files depending on the hostname. Of course you could also use things like IAM-instance roles or something.
We would have this in the default settings file:
import socket
DATABASE = {'default': {'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3', ...}}
hostname = socket.gethostname()
if hostname == "staging-blabla"
from staging import *
staging.py would contain the following:
DATABASE = {'default': {'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2', ...}}