Django: Allow admin user to edit site-wide settings? - django

Question

I have a Django site, and I'd like to allow a couple of site-wide settings:
ADMIN_EMAIL - email address for an administrative user
REMINDER_TEXT - email text for an email that the site will generate once a week
to be edited in the admin interface.
What is the most sensible way to do this? Should I store these values in settings.py, or somewhere in the database?
This previous SO question seems to be related, but I don't think it's ever been fully answered.
Thanks!

Answer 1

I've tried dbsettings (as well as the newer fork of it on github), and they are useful - but a bit too heavy-weight for my needs. Instead, I implemented a simpler method. I did it using a JSONField (from Postgres 9.3) - but you might prefer to use a TextField (use max_length=1000 or somesuch) as it's simpler to explain to people how to enter a string instead of JSON:
1) First, build your own Settings Model (maybe in core/models.py):
class Setting(models.Model):
"""
Model for site-wide settings.
"""
name = models.CharField(max_length=200, help_text="Name of site-wide variable")
value = JSONField(null=True, blank=True, help_text="Value of site-wide variable that scripts can reference - must be valid JSON")
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
2) Then, add an admin interface (in core/admin.py):
class SettingAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
list_display = ['name', 'value']
admin.site.register(Setting, SettingAdmin)
3) Build and run your migrations:
python manage.py schemamigration core --auto
python manage.py migrate core
4) Add to the top of base.html:
<script type="text/javascript">
//Auto-exported site-wide settings
{% autoescape off %}var site_settings = {{ settings|safe|default:"{}" }};{% endautoescape %}
</script>
5) Build an 'injector' that adds code to every request (likely in core/contextprocessors.py)
from models import Setting
import json
def app_settings(request):
"""Global values to pass to templates"""
settings_dict = dict()
settings = dict()
for obj in Setting.objects.all():
settings[obj.name] = obj.value
settings_dict['settings'] = json.dumps(settings)
return settings_dict
5) Then, add the context processors to your site settings.py:
TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
...,
'<yourapp>.core.contextprocessors.app_settings',
)
6) Log into your admin page via browser and create a setting:
http://yoursite/admin/core/setting/
Add a new setting, something like:
cell_status_colors
with a value of:
["green","red"] (note this has to be valid JSON, so use quotes around strings)
or:
daily_header
with a value of:
{"text":"Tomorrow only, free shipping!"}
7) And finally, each of your javascript files should be able to call these via standard JS:
var colors = site_settings.cell_status_colors || ["green","red"];
var msg_text = site_settings.daily_header || {"text":""};

Answer 2

Ideally, settings.py has to be accessed very rarely, because each access consists in exposing important data (db password for instance). So the best place to store extra settings is definitely a database table - a two column table, with the settings key and the actual settings data will suffice.

Answer 3

There are some applications, that allows django admins to define and use some settings through site-wide... One of those such applications(which i used) is dbsettings...
dbsettings applicaton...