django-admin
and manage.py
django-admin
is Django’s command-line utility for administrative tasks.
This document outlines all it can do.
In addition, manage.py
is automatically created in each Django project.
manage.py
does the same thing as django-admin
but takes care of a few
things for you:
- It puts your project’s package on
sys.path
. - It sets the
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE
environment variable so that it points to your project’ssettings.py
file.
The django-admin
script should be on your system path if you installed
Django via its setup.py
utility. If it’s not on your path, you can find it
in site-packages/django/bin
within your Python installation. Consider
symlinking it from some place on your path, such as /usr/local/bin
.
For Windows users, who do not have symlinking functionality available, you can
copy django-admin.exe
to a location on your existing path or edit the
PATH
settings (under Settings - Control Panel - System - Advanced -
Environment...
) to point to its installed location.
Generally, when working on a single Django project, it’s easier to use
manage.py
than django-admin
. If you need to switch between multiple
Django settings files, use django-admin
with
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE
or the --settings
command line
option.
The command-line examples throughout this document use django-admin
to
be consistent, but any example can use manage.py
or python -m django
just as well.
Usage
$ django-admin <command> [options]
$ manage.py <command> [options]
$ python -m django <command> [options]
...\> django-admin <command> [options]
...\> manage.py <command> [options]
...\> py -m django <command> [options]
command
should be one of the commands listed in this document.
options
, which is optional, should be zero or more of the options available
for the given command.
Getting runtime help
-
django-admin help
Run django-admin help
to display usage information and a list of the
commands provided by each application.
Run django-admin help --commands
to display a list of all available
commands.
Run django-admin help <command>
to display a description of the given
command and a list of its available options.
App names
Many commands take a list of “app names.” An “app name” is the basename of
the package containing your models. For example, if your INSTALLED_APPS
contains the string 'mysite.blog'
, the app name is blog
.
Determining the version
-
django-admin version
Run django-admin version
to display the current Django version.
The output follows the schema described in PEP 440:
1.4.dev17026
1.4a1
1.4
Displaying debug output
Use --verbosity
to specify the amount of notification and debug
information that django-admin
prints to the console.
Available commands
check
-
django-admin check [app_label [app_label ...]]
Uses the system check framework to inspect the entire Django project for common problems.
By default, all apps will be checked. You can check a subset of apps by providing a list of app labels as arguments:
django-admin check auth admin myapp
If you do not specify any app, all apps will be checked.
-
--tag
TAGS
,
-t
TAGS
The system check framework performs many different types of checks that are categorized with tags. You can use these tags to restrict the checks performed to just those in a particular category. For example, to perform only models and compatibility checks, run:
django-admin check --tag models --tag compatibility
Lists all available tags.
-
--deploy
Activates some additional checks that are only relevant in a deployment setting.
You can use this option in your local development environment, but since your
local development settings module may not have many of your production settings,
you will probably want to point the check
command at a different settings
module, either by setting the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE
environment variable,
or by passing the --settings
option:
django-admin check --deploy --settings=production_settings
Or you could run it directly on a production or staging deployment to verify
that the correct settings are in use (omitting --settings
). You could even
make it part of your integration test suite.
-
--fail-level
{CRITICAL,ERROR,WARNING,INFO,DEBUG}
Specifies the message level that will cause the command to exit with a non-zero
status. Default is ERROR
.
compilemessages
-
django-admin compilemessages
Compiles .po
files created by makemessages
to .mo
files for
use with the built-in gettext support. See Internationalization and localization.
-
--locale
LOCALE
,
-l
LOCALE
Specifies the locale(s) to process. If not provided, all locales are processed.
-
--exclude
EXCLUDE
,
-x
EXCLUDE
Specifies the locale(s) to exclude from processing. If not provided, no locales are excluded.
-
--use-fuzzy
,
-f
Includes fuzzy translations into compiled files.
Example usage:
django-admin compilemessages --locale=pt_BR
django-admin compilemessages --locale=pt_BR --locale=fr -f
django-admin compilemessages -l pt_BR
django-admin compilemessages -l pt_BR -l fr --use-fuzzy
django-admin compilemessages --exclude=pt_BR
django-admin compilemessages --exclude=pt_BR --exclude=fr
django-admin compilemessages -x pt_BR
django-admin compilemessages -x pt_BR -x fr
createcachetable
-
django-admin createcachetable
Creates the cache tables for use with the database cache backend using the information from your settings file. See Django’s cache framework for more information.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database in which the cache table(s) will be created. Defaults to
default
.
-
--dry-run
Prints the SQL that would be run without actually running it, so you can customize it or use the migrations framework.
dbshell
-
django-admin dbshell
Runs the command-line client for the database engine specified in your
ENGINE
setting, with the connection parameters
specified in your USER
, PASSWORD
, etc., settings.
- For PostgreSQL, this runs the
psql
command-line client. - For MySQL, this runs the
mysql
command-line client. - For SQLite, this runs the
sqlite3
command-line client. - For Oracle, this runs the
sqlplus
command-line client.
This command assumes the programs are on your PATH
so that a simple call to
the program name (psql
, mysql
, sqlite3
, sqlplus
) will find the
program in the right place. There’s no way to specify the location of the
program manually.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database onto which to open a shell. Defaults to default
.
diffsettings
-
django-admin diffsettings
Displays differences between the current settings file and Django’s default
settings (or another settings file specified by --default
).
Settings that don’t appear in the defaults are followed by "###"
. For
example, the default settings don’t define ROOT_URLCONF
, so
ROOT_URLCONF
is followed by "###"
in the output of
diffsettings
.
-
--all
Displays all settings, even if they have Django’s default value. Such settings
are prefixed by "###"
.
-
--default
MODULE
The settings module to compare the current settings against. Leave empty to compare against Django’s default settings.
-
--output
{hash,unified}
Specifies the output format. Available values are hash
and unified
.
hash
is the default mode that displays the output that’s described above.
unified
displays the output similar to diff -u
. Default settings are
prefixed with a minus sign, followed by the changed setting prefixed with a
plus sign.
dumpdata
-
django-admin dumpdata [app_label[.ModelName] [app_label[.ModelName] ...]]
Outputs to standard output all data in the database associated with the named application(s).
If no application name is provided, all installed applications will be dumped.
The output of dumpdata
can be used as input for loaddata
.
Note that dumpdata
uses the default manager on the model for selecting the
records to dump. If you’re using a custom manager as
the default manager and it filters some of the available records, not all of the
objects will be dumped.
-
--all
,
-a
Uses Django’s base manager, dumping records which might otherwise be filtered or modified by a custom manager.
-
--format
FORMAT
Specifies the serialization format of the output. Defaults to JSON. Supported formats are listed in Serialization formats.
-
--indent
INDENT
Specifies the number of indentation spaces to use in the output. Defaults to
None
which displays all data on single line.
-
--exclude
EXCLUDE
,
-e
EXCLUDE
Prevents specific applications or models (specified in the form of
app_label.ModelName
) from being dumped. If you specify a model name, the
output will be restricted to that model, rather than the entire application.
You can also mix application names and model names.
If you want to exclude multiple applications, pass --exclude
more than
once:
django-admin dumpdata --exclude=auth --exclude=contenttypes
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database from which data will be dumped. Defaults to default
.
-
--natural-foreign
Uses the natural_key()
model method to serialize any foreign key and
many-to-many relationship to objects of the type that defines the method. If
you’re dumping contrib.auth
Permission
objects or
contrib.contenttypes
ContentType
objects, you should probably use this
flag. See the natural keys
documentation for more details on this and the next option.
-
--natural-primary
Omits the primary key in the serialized data of this object since it can be calculated during deserialization.
-
--pks
PRIMARY_KEYS
Outputs only the objects specified by a comma separated list of primary keys. This is only available when dumping one model. By default, all the records of the model are output.
-
--output
OUTPUT
,
-o
OUTPUT
Specifies a file to write the serialized data to. By default, the data goes to standard output.
When this option is set and --verbosity
is greater than 0 (the default), a
progress bar is shown in the terminal.
flush
-
django-admin flush
Removes all data from the database and re-executes any post-synchronization handlers. The table of which migrations have been applied is not cleared.
If you would rather start from an empty database and re-run all migrations, you
should drop and recreate the database and then run migrate
instead.
-
--noinput
,
--no-input
Suppresses all user prompts.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database to flush. Defaults to default
.
inspectdb
-
django-admin inspectdb [table [table ...]]
Introspects the database tables in the database pointed-to by the
NAME
setting and outputs a Django model module (a models.py
file) to standard output.
You may choose what tables or views to inspect by passing their names as
arguments. If no arguments are provided, models are created for views only if
the --include-views
option is used.
Use this if you have a legacy database with which you’d like to use Django. The script will inspect the database and create a model for each table within it.
As you might expect, the created models will have an attribute for every field
in the table. Note that inspectdb
has a few special cases in its field-name
output:
- If
inspectdb
cannot map a column’s type to a model field type, it’ll useTextField
and will insert the Python comment'This field type is a guess.'
next to the field in the generated model. The recognized fields may depend on apps listed inINSTALLED_APPS
. For example,django.contrib.postgres
adds recognition for several PostgreSQL-specific field types. - If the database column name is a Python reserved word (such as
'pass'
,'class'
or'for'
),inspectdb
will append'_field'
to the attribute name. For example, if a table has a column'for'
, the generated model will have a field'for_field'
, with thedb_column
attribute set to'for'
.inspectdb
will insert the Python comment'Field renamed because it was a Python reserved word.'
next to the field.
This feature is meant as a shortcut, not as definitive model generation. After you run it, you’ll want to look over the generated models yourself to make customizations. In particular, you’ll need to rearrange models’ order, so that models that refer to other models are ordered properly.
Primary keys are automatically introspected for PostgreSQL, MySQL and
SQLite, in which case Django puts in the primary_key=True
where
needed.
inspectdb
works with PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite. Foreign-key detection
only works in PostgreSQL and with certain types of MySQL tables.
Django doesn’t create database defaults when a
default
is specified on a model field.
Similarly, database defaults aren’t translated to model field defaults or
detected in any fashion by inspectdb
.
By default, inspectdb
creates unmanaged models. That is, managed = False
in the model’s Meta
class tells Django not to manage each table’s creation,
modification, and deletion. If you do want to allow Django to manage the
table’s lifecycle, you’ll need to change the
managed
option to True
(or simply remove
it because True
is its default value).
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database to introspect. Defaults to default
.
-
--include-views
If this option is provided, models are also created for database views.
loaddata
-
django-admin loaddata fixture [fixture ...]
Searches for and loads the contents of the named fixture into the database.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database into which the data will be loaded. Defaults to
default
.
-
--ignorenonexistent
,
-i
Ignores fields and models that may have been removed since the fixture was originally generated.
-
--app
APP_LABEL
Specifies a single app to look for fixtures in rather than looking in all apps.
-
--format
FORMAT
Specifies the serialization format (e.g.,
json
or xml
) for fixtures read from stdin.
-
--exclude
EXCLUDE
,
-e
EXCLUDE
Excludes loading the fixtures from the given applications and/or models (in the
form of app_label
or app_label.ModelName
). Use the option multiple
times to exclude more than one app or model.
What’s a “fixture”?
A fixture is a collection of files that contain the serialized contents of the database. Each fixture has a unique name, and the files that comprise the fixture can be distributed over multiple directories, in multiple applications.
Django will search in three locations for fixtures:
- In the
fixtures
directory of every installed application - In any directory named in the
FIXTURE_DIRS
setting - In the literal path named by the fixture
Django will load any and all fixtures it finds in these locations that match the provided fixture names.
If the named fixture has a file extension, only fixtures of that type will be loaded. For example:
django-admin loaddata mydata.json
would only load JSON fixtures called mydata
. The fixture extension
must correspond to the registered name of a
serializer (e.g., json
or xml
).
If you omit the extensions, Django will search all available fixture types for a matching fixture. For example:
django-admin loaddata mydata
would look for any fixture of any fixture type called mydata
. If a fixture
directory contained mydata.json
, that fixture would be loaded
as a JSON fixture.
The fixtures that are named can include directory components. These directories will be included in the search path. For example:
django-admin loaddata foo/bar/mydata.json
would search <app_label>/fixtures/foo/bar/mydata.json
for each installed
application, <dirname>/foo/bar/mydata.json
for each directory in
FIXTURE_DIRS
, and the literal path foo/bar/mydata.json
.
When fixture files are processed, the data is saved to the database as is.
Model defined save()
methods are not called, and
any pre_save
or
post_save
signals will be called with
raw=True
since the instance only contains attributes that are local to the
model. You may, for example, want to disable handlers that access
related fields that aren’t present during fixture loading and would otherwise
raise an exception:
from django.db.models.signals import post_save
from .models import MyModel
def my_handler(**kwargs):
# disable the handler during fixture loading
if kwargs['raw']:
return
...
post_save.connect(my_handler, sender=MyModel)
You could also write a simple decorator to encapsulate this logic:
from functools import wraps
def disable_for_loaddata(signal_handler):
"""
Decorator that turns off signal handlers when loading fixture data.
"""
@wraps(signal_handler)
def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
if kwargs['raw']:
return
signal_handler(*args, **kwargs)
return wrapper
@disable_for_loaddata
def my_handler(**kwargs):
...
Just be aware that this logic will disable the signals whenever fixtures are
deserialized, not just during loaddata
.
Note that the order in which fixture files are processed is undefined. However, all fixture data is installed as a single transaction, so data in one fixture can reference data in another fixture. If the database backend supports row-level constraints, these constraints will be checked at the end of the transaction.
The dumpdata
command can be used to generate input for loaddata
.
Compressed fixtures
Fixtures may be compressed in zip
, gz
, or bz2
format. For example:
django-admin loaddata mydata.json
would look for any of mydata.json
, mydata.json.zip
,
mydata.json.gz
, or mydata.json.bz2
. The first file contained within a
zip-compressed archive is used.
Note that if two fixtures with the same name but different
fixture type are discovered (for example, if mydata.json
and
mydata.xml.gz
were found in the same fixture directory), fixture
installation will be aborted, and any data installed in the call to
loaddata
will be removed from the database.
MySQL with MyISAM and fixtures
The MyISAM storage engine of MySQL doesn’t support transactions or constraints, so if you use MyISAM, you won’t get validation of fixture data, or a rollback if multiple transaction files are found.
Database-specific fixtures
If you’re in a multi-database setup, you might have fixture data that you want to load onto one database, but not onto another. In this situation, you can add a database identifier into the names of your fixtures.
For example, if your DATABASES
setting has a ‘master’ database
defined, name the fixture mydata.master.json
or
mydata.master.json.gz
and the fixture will only be loaded when you
specify you want to load data into the master
database.
Loading fixtures from stdin
You can use a dash as the fixture name to load input from sys.stdin
. For
example:
django-admin loaddata --format=json -
When reading from stdin
, the --format
option
is required to specify the serialization format
of the input (e.g., json
or xml
).
Loading from stdin
is useful with standard input and output redirections.
For example:
django-admin dumpdata --format=json --database=test app_label.ModelName | django-admin loaddata --format=json --database=prod -
makemessages
-
django-admin makemessages
Runs over the entire source tree of the current directory and pulls out all
strings marked for translation. It creates (or updates) a message file in the
conf/locale (in the Django tree) or locale (for project and application)
directory. After making changes to the messages files you need to compile them
with compilemessages
for use with the builtin gettext support. See
the i18n documentation for details.
This command doesn’t require configured settings. However, when settings aren’t
configured, the command can’t ignore the MEDIA_ROOT
and
STATIC_ROOT
directories or include LOCALE_PATHS
. It will
also write files in UTF-8 rather than in FILE_CHARSET
.
-
--all
,
-a
Updates the message files for all available languages.
-
--extension
EXTENSIONS
,
-e
EXTENSIONS
Specifies a list of file extensions to examine (default: html
, txt
,
py
or js
if --domain
is js
).
Example usage:
django-admin makemessages --locale=de --extension xhtml
Separate multiple extensions with commas or use -e
or --extension
multiple times:
django-admin makemessages --locale=de --extension=html,txt --extension xml
-
--locale
LOCALE
,
-l
LOCALE
Specifies the locale(s) to process.
-
--exclude
EXCLUDE
,
-x
EXCLUDE
Specifies the locale(s) to exclude from processing. If not provided, no locales are excluded.
Example usage:
django-admin makemessages --locale=pt_BR
django-admin makemessages --locale=pt_BR --locale=fr
django-admin makemessages -l pt_BR
django-admin makemessages -l pt_BR -l fr
django-admin makemessages --exclude=pt_BR
django-admin makemessages --exclude=pt_BR --exclude=fr
django-admin makemessages -x pt_BR
django-admin makemessages -x pt_BR -x fr
-
--domain
DOMAIN
,
-d
DOMAIN
Specifies the domain of the messages files. Supported options are:
django
for all*.py
,*.html
and*.txt
files (default)djangojs
for*.js
files
-
--symlinks
,
-s
Follows symlinks to directories when looking for new translation strings.
Example usage:
django-admin makemessages --locale=de --symlinks
-
--ignore
PATTERN
,
-i
PATTERN
Ignores files or directories matching the given glob
-style pattern. Use
multiple times to ignore more.
These patterns are used by default: 'CVS'
, '.*'
, '*~'
, '*.pyc'
.
Example usage:
django-admin makemessages --locale=en_US --ignore=apps/* --ignore=secret/*.html
-
--no-default-ignore
Disables the default values of --ignore
.
-
--no-wrap
Disables breaking long message lines into several lines in language files.
-
--no-location
Suppresses writing ‘#: filename:line
’ comment lines in language files.
Using this option makes it harder for technically skilled translators to
understand each message’s context.
-
--add-location
[{full,file,never}]
Controls #: filename:line
comment lines in language files. If the option
is:
full
(the default if not given): the lines include both file name and line number.file
: the line number is omitted.never
: the lines are suppressed (same as--no-location
).
Requires gettext
0.19 or newer.
-
--keep-pot
Prevents deleting the temporary .pot
files generated before creating the
.po
file. This is useful for debugging errors which may prevent the final
language files from being created.
See also
See Customizing the makemessages command for instructions on how to customize
the keywords that makemessages
passes to xgettext
.
makemigrations
-
django-admin makemigrations [app_label [app_label ...]]
Creates new migrations based on the changes detected to your models. Migrations, their relationship with apps and more are covered in depth in the migrations documentation.
Providing one or more app names as arguments will limit the migrations created
to the app(s) specified and any dependencies needed (the table at the other end
of a ForeignKey
, for example).
To add migrations to an app that doesn’t have a migrations
directory, run
makemigrations
with the app’s app_label
.
-
--noinput
,
--no-input
Suppresses all user prompts. If a suppressed prompt cannot be resolved automatically, the command will exit with error code 3.
-
--empty
Outputs an empty migration for the specified apps, for manual editing. This is for advanced users and should not be used unless you are familiar with the migration format, migration operations, and the dependencies between your migrations.
-
--dry-run
Shows what migrations would be made without actually writing any migrations
files to disk. Using this option along with --verbosity 3
will also show
the complete migrations files that would be written.
-
--merge
Enables fixing of migration conflicts.
-
--name
NAME
,
-n
NAME
Allows naming the generated migration(s) instead of using a generated name.
-
--check
Makes makemigrations
exit with a non-zero status when model changes without
migrations are detected.
migrate
-
django-admin migrate [app_label] [migration_name]
Synchronizes the database state with the current set of models and migrations. Migrations, their relationship with apps and more are covered in depth in the migrations documentation.
The behavior of this command changes depending on the arguments provided:
- No arguments: All apps have all of their migrations run.
<app_label>
: The specified app has its migrations run, up to the most recent migration. This may involve running other apps’ migrations too, due to dependencies.<app_label> <migrationname>
: Brings the database schema to a state where the named migration is applied, but no later migrations in the same app are applied. This may involve unapplying migrations if you have previously migrated past the named migration. Use the namezero
to unapply all migrations for an app.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database to migrate. Defaults to default
.
-
--fake
Marks the migrations up to the target one (following the rules above) as applied, but without actually running the SQL to change your database schema.
This is intended for advanced users to manipulate the
current migration state directly if they’re manually applying changes;
be warned that using --fake
runs the risk of putting the migration state
table into a state where manual recovery will be needed to make migrations
run correctly.
-
--fake-initial
Allows Django to skip an app’s initial migration if all database tables with
the names of all models created by all
CreateModel
operations in that
migration already exist. This option is intended for use when first running
migrations against a database that preexisted the use of migrations. This
option does not, however, check for matching database schema beyond matching
table names and so is only safe to use if you are confident that your existing
schema matches what is recorded in your initial migration.
-
--run-syncdb
Allows creating tables for apps without migrations. While this isn’t recommended, the migrations framework is sometimes too slow on large projects with hundreds of models.
-
--noinput
,
--no-input
Suppresses all user prompts. An example prompt is asking about removing stale content types.
runserver
-
django-admin runserver [addrport]
Starts a lightweight development Web server on the local machine. By default,
the server runs on port 8000 on the IP address 127.0.0.1
. You can pass in an
IP address and port number explicitly.
If you run this script as a user with normal privileges (recommended), you might not have access to start a port on a low port number. Low port numbers are reserved for the superuser (root).
This server uses the WSGI application object specified by the
WSGI_APPLICATION
setting.
DO NOT USE THIS SERVER IN A PRODUCTION SETTING. It has not gone through security audits or performance tests. (And that’s how it’s gonna stay. We’re in the business of making Web frameworks, not Web servers, so improving this server to be able to handle a production environment is outside the scope of Django.)
The development server automatically reloads Python code for each request, as needed. You don’t need to restart the server for code changes to take effect. However, some actions like adding files don’t trigger a restart, so you’ll have to restart the server in these cases.
If you are using Linux and install pyinotify, kernel signals will be used to autoreload the server (rather than polling file modification timestamps each second). This offers better scaling to large projects, reduction in response time to code modification, more robust change detection, and battery usage reduction.
When you start the server, and each time you change Python code while the
server is running, the system check framework will check your entire Django
project for some common errors (see the check
command). If any
errors are found, they will be printed to standard output.
You can run as many concurrent servers as you want, as long as they’re on
separate ports. Just execute django-admin runserver
more than once.
Note that the default IP address, 127.0.0.1
, is not accessible from other
machines on your network. To make your development server viewable to other
machines on the network, use its own IP address (e.g. 192.168.2.1
) or
0.0.0.0
or ::
(with IPv6 enabled).
You can provide an IPv6 address surrounded by brackets
(e.g. [200a::1]:8000
). This will automatically enable IPv6 support.
A hostname containing ASCII-only characters can also be used.
If the staticfiles contrib app is enabled
(default in new projects) the runserver
command will be overridden
with its own runserver command.
Logging of each request and response of the server is sent to the django.server logger.
-
--noreload
Disables the auto-reloader. This means any Python code changes you make while the server is running will not take effect if the particular Python modules have already been loaded into memory.
-
--nothreading
Disables use of threading in the development server. The server is multithreaded by default.
-
--ipv6
,
-6
Uses IPv6 for the development server. This changes the default IP address from
127.0.0.1
to ::1
.
Examples of using different ports and addresses
Port 8000 on IP address 127.0.0.1
:
django-admin runserver
Port 8000 on IP address 1.2.3.4
:
django-admin runserver 1.2.3.4:8000
Port 7000 on IP address 127.0.0.1
:
django-admin runserver 7000
Port 7000 on IP address 1.2.3.4
:
django-admin runserver 1.2.3.4:7000
Port 8000 on IPv6 address ::1
:
django-admin runserver -6
Port 7000 on IPv6 address ::1
:
django-admin runserver -6 7000
Port 7000 on IPv6 address 2001:0db8:1234:5678::9
:
django-admin runserver [2001:0db8:1234:5678::9]:7000
Port 8000 on IPv4 address of host localhost
:
django-admin runserver localhost:8000
Port 8000 on IPv6 address of host localhost
:
django-admin runserver -6 localhost:8000
Serving static files with the development server
By default, the development server doesn’t serve any static files for your site
(such as CSS files, images, things under MEDIA_URL
and so forth). If
you want to configure Django to serve static media, read
Managing static files (e.g. images, JavaScript, CSS).
sendtestemail
-
django-admin sendtestemail [email [email ...]]
Sends a test email (to confirm email sending through Django is working) to the recipient(s) specified. For example:
django-admin sendtestemail foo@example.com bar@example.com
There are a couple of options, and you may use any combination of them together:
-
--managers
Mails the email addresses specified in MANAGERS
using
mail_managers()
.
-
--admins
Mails the email addresses specified in ADMINS
using
mail_admins()
.
shell
-
django-admin shell
Starts the Python interactive interpreter.
-
--interface
{ipython,bpython,python}
,
-i
{ipython,bpython,python}
Specifies the shell to use. By default, Django will use IPython or bpython if either is installed. If both are installed, specify which one you want like so:
IPython:
django-admin shell -i ipython
bpython:
django-admin shell -i bpython
If you have a “rich” shell installed but want to force use of the “plain”
Python interpreter, use python
as the interface name, like so:
django-admin shell -i python
-
--nostartup
Disables reading the startup script for the “plain” Python interpreter. By
default, the script pointed to by the PYTHONSTARTUP
environment
variable or the ~/.pythonrc.py
script is read.
-
--command
COMMAND
,
-c
COMMAND
Lets you pass a command as a string to execute it as Django, like so:
django-admin shell --command="import django; print(django.__version__)"
You can also pass code in on standard input to execute it. For example:
$ django-admin shell <<EOF
> import django
> print(django.__version__)
> EOF
On Windows, the REPL is output due to implementation limits of
select.select()
on that platform.
showmigrations
-
django-admin showmigrations [app_label [app_label ...]]
Shows all migrations in a project. You can choose from one of two formats:
-
--list
,
-l
Lists all of the apps Django knows about, the migrations available for each
app, and whether or not each migration is applied (marked by an [X]
next to
the migration name).
Apps without migrations are also listed, but have (no migrations)
printed
under them.
This is the default output format.
-
--plan
,
-p
Shows the migration plan Django will follow to apply migrations. Like
--list
, applied migrations are marked by an [X]
. For a --verbosity
of 2 and above, all dependencies of a migration will also be shown.
app_label
s arguments limit the output, however, dependencies of provided
apps may also be included.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database to examine. Defaults to default
.
sqlflush
-
django-admin sqlflush
Prints the SQL statements that would be executed for the flush
command.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database for which to print the SQL. Defaults to default
.
sqlmigrate
-
django-admin sqlmigrate app_label migration_name
Prints the SQL for the named migration. This requires an active database connection, which it will use to resolve constraint names; this means you must generate the SQL against a copy of the database you wish to later apply it on.
Note that sqlmigrate
doesn’t colorize its output.
-
--backwards
Generates the SQL for unapplying the migration. By default, the SQL created is for running the migration in the forwards direction.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database for which to generate the SQL. Defaults to default
.
sqlsequencereset
-
django-admin sqlsequencereset app_label [app_label ...]
Prints the SQL statements for resetting sequences for the given app name(s).
Sequences are indexes used by some database engines to track the next available number for automatically incremented fields.
Use this command to generate SQL which will fix cases where a sequence is out of sync with its automatically incremented field data.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database for which to print the SQL. Defaults to default
.
squashmigrations
-
django-admin squashmigrations app_label [start_migration_name] migration_name
Squashes the migrations for app_label
up to and including migration_name
down into fewer migrations, if possible. The resulting squashed migrations
can live alongside the unsquashed ones safely. For more information,
please read Squashing migrations.
When start_migration_name
is given, Django will only include migrations
starting from and including this migration. This helps to mitigate the
squashing limitation of RunPython
and
django.db.migrations.operations.RunSQL
migration operations.
-
--no-optimize
Disables the optimizer when generating a squashed migration. By default, Django will try to optimize the operations in your migrations to reduce the size of the resulting file. Use this option if this process is failing or creating incorrect migrations, though please also file a Django bug report about the behavior, as optimization is meant to be safe.
-
--noinput
,
--no-input
Suppresses all user prompts.
-
--squashed-name
SQUASHED_NAME
Sets the name of the squashed migration. When omitted, the name is based on the
first and last migration, with _squashed_
in between.
startapp
-
django-admin startapp name [directory]
Creates a Django app directory structure for the given app name in the current directory or the given destination.
By default the directory created contains a models.py
file and other app
template files. (See the source for more details.) If only the app
name is given, the app directory will be created in the current working
directory.
If the optional destination is provided, Django will use that existing directory rather than creating a new one. You can use ‘.’ to denote the current working directory.
For example:
django-admin startapp myapp /Users/jezdez/Code/myapp
-
--template
TEMPLATE
Provides the path to a directory with a custom app template file or a path to a
compressed file (.tar.gz
, .tar.bz2
, .tgz
, .tbz
, .zip
)
containing the app template files.
For example, this would look for an app template in the given directory when
creating the myapp
app:
django-admin startapp --template=/Users/jezdez/Code/my_app_template myapp
Django will also accept URLs (http
, https
, ftp
) to compressed
archives with the app template files, downloading and extracting them on the
fly.
For example, taking advantage of GitHub’s feature to expose repositories as zip files, you can use a URL like:
django-admin startapp --template=https://github.com/githubuser/django-app-template/archive/master.zip myapp
-
--extension
EXTENSIONS
,
-e
EXTENSIONS
Specifies which file extensions in the app template should be rendered with the
template engine. Defaults to py
.
-
--name
FILES
,
-n
FILES
Specifies which files in the app template (in addition to those matching
--extension
) should be rendered with the template engine. Defaults to an
empty list.
The template context
used for all matching
files is:
- Any option passed to the
startapp
command (among the command’s supported options) app_name
– the app name as passed to the commandapp_directory
– the full path of the newly created appcamel_case_app_name
– the app name in camel case formatdocs_version
– the version of the documentation:'dev'
or'1.x'
django_version
– the version of Django, e.g.``‘2.0.3’``
Warning
When the app template files are rendered with the Django template
engine (by default all *.py
files), Django will also replace all
stray template variables contained. For example, if one of the Python files
contains a docstring explaining a particular feature related
to template rendering, it might result in an incorrect example.
To work around this problem, you can use the templatetag
template tag to “escape” the various parts of the template syntax.
In addition, to allow Python template files that contain Django template
language syntax while also preventing packaging systems from trying to
byte-compile invalid *.py
files, template files ending with .py-tpl
will be renamed to .py
.
startproject
-
django-admin startproject name [directory]
Creates a Django project directory structure for the given project name in the current directory or the given destination.
By default, the new directory contains manage.py
and a project package
(containing a settings.py
and other files). See the template source for
details.
If only the project name is given, both the project directory and project
package will be named <projectname>
and the project directory
will be created in the current working directory.
If the optional destination is provided, Django will use that existing
directory as the project directory, and create manage.py
and the project
package within it. Use ‘.’ to denote the current working directory.
For example:
django-admin startproject myproject /Users/jezdez/Code/myproject_repo
-
--template
TEMPLATE
Specifies a directory, file path, or URL of a custom project template. See the
startapp --template
documentation for examples and usage.
-
--extension
EXTENSIONS
,
-e
EXTENSIONS
Specifies which file extensions in the project template should be rendered with
the template engine. Defaults to py
.
-
--name
FILES
,
-n
FILES
Specifies which files in the project template (in addition to those matching
--extension
) should be rendered with the template engine. Defaults to an
empty list.
The template context
used is:
- Any option passed to the
startproject
command (among the command’s supported options) project_name
– the project name as passed to the commandproject_directory
– the full path of the newly created projectsecret_key
– a random key for theSECRET_KEY
settingdocs_version
– the version of the documentation:'dev'
or'1.x'
django_version
– the version of Django, e.g.``‘2.0.3’``
Please also see the rendering warning as mentioned
for startapp
.
test
-
django-admin test [test_label [test_label ...]]
Runs tests for all installed apps. See Testing in Django for more information.
-
--failfast
Stops running tests and reports the failure immediately after a test fails.
-
--testrunner
TESTRUNNER
Controls the test runner class that is used to execute tests. This value
overrides the value provided by the TEST_RUNNER
setting.
-
--noinput
,
--no-input
Suppresses all user prompts. A typical prompt is a warning about deleting an existing test database.
Test runner options
The test
command receives options on behalf of the specified
--testrunner
. These are the options of the default test runner:
DiscoverRunner
.
-
--keepdb
,
-k
Preserves the test database between test runs. This has the advantage of skipping both the create and destroy actions which can greatly decrease the time to run tests, especially those in a large test suite. If the test database does not exist, it will be created on the first run and then preserved for each subsequent run. Any unapplied migrations will also be applied to the test database before running the test suite.
-
--reverse
,
-r
Sorts test cases in the opposite execution order. This may help in debugging the side effects of tests that aren’t properly isolated. Grouping by test class is preserved when using this option.
-
--debug-mode
Sets the DEBUG
setting to True
prior to running tests. This may
help troubleshoot test failures.
-
--debug-sql
,
-d
Enables SQL logging for failing tests. If
--verbosity
is 2
, then queries in passing tests are also output.
-
--parallel
[N]
Runs tests in separate parallel processes. Since modern processors have multiple cores, this allows running tests significantly faster.
By default --parallel
runs one process per core according to
multiprocessing.cpu_count()
. You can adjust the number of processes
either by providing it as the option’s value, e.g. --parallel=4
, or by
setting the DJANGO_TEST_PROCESSES
environment variable.
Django distributes test cases — unittest.TestCase
subclasses — to
subprocesses. If there are fewer test cases than configured processes, Django
will reduce the number of processes accordingly.
Each process gets its own database. You must ensure that different test cases don’t access the same resources. For instance, test cases that touch the filesystem should create a temporary directory for their own use.
This option requires the third-party tblib
package to display tracebacks
correctly:
$ pip install tblib
This feature isn’t available on Windows. It doesn’t work with the Oracle database backend either.
If you want to use pdb
while debugging tests, you must disable parallel
execution (--parallel=1
). You’ll see something like bdb.BdbQuit
if you
don’t.
Warning
When test parallelization is enabled and a test fails, Django may be unable to display the exception traceback. This can make debugging difficult. If you encounter this problem, run the affected test without parallelization to see the traceback of the failure.
This is a known limitation. It arises from the need to serialize objects in order to exchange them between processes. See What can be pickled and unpickled? for details.
-
--tag
TAGS
Runs only tests marked with the specified tags.
May be specified multiple times and combined with test --exclude-tag
.
-
--exclude-tag
EXCLUDE_TAGS
Excludes tests marked with the specified tags.
May be specified multiple times and combined with test --tag
.
testserver
-
django-admin testserver [fixture [fixture ...]]
Runs a Django development server (as in runserver
) using data from
the given fixture(s).
For example, this command:
django-admin testserver mydata.json
…would perform the following steps:
- Create a test database, as described in The test database.
- Populate the test database with fixture data from the given fixtures.
(For more on fixtures, see the documentation for
loaddata
above.) - Runs the Django development server (as in
runserver
), pointed at this newly created test database instead of your production database.
This is useful in a number of ways:
- When you’re writing unit tests of how your views
act with certain fixture data, you can use
testserver
to interact with the views in a Web browser, manually. - Let’s say you’re developing your Django application and have a “pristine”
copy of a database that you’d like to interact with. You can dump your
database to a fixture (using the
dumpdata
command, explained above), then usetestserver
to run your Web application with that data. With this arrangement, you have the flexibility of messing up your data in any way, knowing that whatever data changes you’re making are only being made to a test database.
Note that this server does not automatically detect changes to your Python
source code (as runserver
does). It does, however, detect changes to
templates.
-
--addrport
ADDRPORT
Specifies a different port, or IP address and port, from the default of
127.0.0.1:8000
. This value follows exactly the same format and serves
exactly the same function as the argument to the runserver
command.
Examples:
To run the test server on port 7000 with fixture1
and fixture2
:
django-admin testserver --addrport 7000 fixture1 fixture2
django-admin testserver fixture1 fixture2 --addrport 7000
(The above statements are equivalent. We include both of them to demonstrate that it doesn’t matter whether the options come before or after the fixture arguments.)
To run on 1.2.3.4:7000 with a test
fixture:
django-admin testserver --addrport 1.2.3.4:7000 test
-
--noinput
,
--no-input
Suppresses all user prompts. A typical prompt is a warning about deleting an existing test database.
Commands provided by applications
Some commands are only available when the django.contrib
application that
implements them has been
enabled
. This section describes them grouped by
their application.
django.contrib.auth
changepassword
-
django-admin changepassword [<username>]
This command is only available if Django’s authentication system (django.contrib.auth
) is installed.
Allows changing a user’s password. It prompts you to enter a new password twice for the given user. If the entries are identical, this immediately becomes the new password. If you do not supply a user, the command will attempt to change the password whose username matches the current user.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database to query for the user. Defaults to default
.
Example usage:
django-admin changepassword ringo
createsuperuser
-
django-admin createsuperuser
This command is only available if Django’s authentication system (django.contrib.auth
) is installed.
Creates a superuser account (a user who has all permissions). This is useful if you need to create an initial superuser account or if you need to programmatically generate superuser accounts for your site(s).
When run interactively, this command will prompt for a password for the new superuser account. When run non-interactively, no password will be set, and the superuser account will not be able to log in until a password has been manually set for it.
-
--username
USERNAME
-
--email
EMAIL
The username and email address for the new account can be supplied by
using the --username
and --email
arguments on the command
line. If either of those is not supplied, createsuperuser
will prompt for
it when running interactively.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database into which the superuser object will be saved.
You can subclass the management command and override get_input_data()
if you
want to customize data input and validation. Consult the source code for
details on the existing implementation and the method’s parameters. For example,
it could be useful if you have a ForeignKey
in
REQUIRED_FIELDS
and want to
allow creating an instance instead of entering the primary key of an existing
instance.
django.contrib.contenttypes
remove_stale_contenttypes
-
django-admin remove_stale_contenttypes
This command is only available if Django’s contenttypes app (django.contrib.contenttypes
) is installed.
Deletes stale content types (from deleted models) in your database. Any objects that depend on the deleted content types will also be deleted. A list of deleted objects will be displayed before you confirm it’s okay to proceed with the deletion.
-
--database
DATABASE
Specifies the database to use. Defaults to default
.
django.contrib.gis
ogrinspect
This command is only available if GeoDjango
(django.contrib.gis
) is installed.
Please refer to its description
in the GeoDjango
documentation.
django.contrib.sessions
clearsessions
-
django-admin clearsessions
Can be run as a cron job or directly to clean out expired sessions.
django.contrib.sitemaps
ping_google
This command is only available if the Sitemaps framework (django.contrib.sitemaps
) is installed.
Please refer to its description
in the Sitemaps
documentation.
django.contrib.staticfiles
collectstatic
This command is only available if the static files application (django.contrib.staticfiles
) is installed.
Please refer to its description
in the
staticfiles documentation.
findstatic
This command is only available if the static files application (django.contrib.staticfiles
) is installed.
Please refer to its description
in the staticfiles documentation.
Default options
Although some commands may allow their own custom options, every command allows for the following options:
-
--pythonpath
PYTHONPATH
Adds the given filesystem path to the Python import search path. If this
isn’t provided, django-admin
will use the PYTHONPATH
environment
variable.
This option is unnecessary in manage.py
, because it takes care of setting
the Python path for you.
Example usage:
django-admin migrate --pythonpath='/home/djangoprojects/myproject'
-
--settings
SETTINGS
Specifies the settings module to use. The settings module should be in Python
package syntax, e.g. mysite.settings
. If this isn’t provided,
django-admin
will use the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE
environment variable.
This option is unnecessary in manage.py
, because it uses
settings.py
from the current project by default.
Example usage:
django-admin migrate --settings=mysite.settings
-
--traceback
Displays a full stack trace when a CommandError
is raised. By default, django-admin
will show a simple error message when a
CommandError
occurs and a full stack trace for any other exception.
Example usage:
django-admin migrate --traceback
-
--verbosity
{0,1,2,3}
,
-v
{0,1,2,3}
Specifies the amount of notification and debug information that a command should print to the console.
0
means no output.1
means normal output (default).2
means verbose output.3
means very verbose output.
Example usage:
django-admin migrate --verbosity 2
-
--no-color
Disables colorized command output. Some commands format their output to be colorized. For example, errors will be printed to the console in red and SQL statements will be syntax highlighted.
Example usage:
django-admin runserver --no-color
Extra niceties
Syntax coloring
The django-admin
/ manage.py
commands will use pretty
color-coded output if your terminal supports ANSI-colored output. It
won’t use the color codes if you’re piping the command’s output to
another program.
Under Windows, the native console doesn’t support ANSI escape sequences so by default there is no color output. But you can install the ANSICON third-party tool, the Django commands will detect its presence and will make use of its services to color output just like on Unix-based platforms.
The colors used for syntax highlighting can be customized. Django ships with three color palettes:
dark
, suited to terminals that show white text on a black background. This is the default palette.light
, suited to terminals that show black text on a white background.nocolor
, which disables syntax highlighting.
You select a palette by setting a DJANGO_COLORS
environment
variable to specify the palette you want to use. For example, to
specify the light
palette under a Unix or OS/X BASH shell, you
would run the following at a command prompt:
export DJANGO_COLORS="light"
You can also customize the colors that are used. Django specifies a number of roles in which color is used:
error
- A major error.notice
- A minor error.success
- A success.warning
- A warning.sql_field
- The name of a model field in SQL.sql_coltype
- The type of a model field in SQL.sql_keyword
- An SQL keyword.sql_table
- The name of a model in SQL.http_info
- A 1XX HTTP Informational server response.http_success
- A 2XX HTTP Success server response.http_not_modified
- A 304 HTTP Not Modified server response.http_redirect
- A 3XX HTTP Redirect server response other than 304.http_not_found
- A 404 HTTP Not Found server response.http_bad_request
- A 4XX HTTP Bad Request server response other than 404.http_server_error
- A 5XX HTTP Server Error response.migrate_heading
- A heading in a migrations management command.migrate_label
- A migration name.
Each of these roles can be assigned a specific foreground and background color, from the following list:
black
red
green
yellow
blue
magenta
cyan
white
Each of these colors can then be modified by using the following display options:
bold
underscore
blink
reverse
conceal
A color specification follows one of the following patterns:
role=fg
role=fg/bg
role=fg,option,option
role=fg/bg,option,option
where role
is the name of a valid color role, fg
is the
foreground color, bg
is the background color and each option
is one of the color modifying options. Multiple color specifications
are then separated by a semicolon. For example:
export DJANGO_COLORS="error=yellow/blue,blink;notice=magenta"
would specify that errors be displayed using blinking yellow on blue, and notices displayed using magenta. All other color roles would be left uncolored.
Colors can also be specified by extending a base palette. If you put a palette name in a color specification, all the colors implied by that palette will be loaded. So:
export DJANGO_COLORS="light;error=yellow/blue,blink;notice=magenta"
would specify the use of all the colors in the light color palette, except for the colors for errors and notices which would be overridden as specified.
Bash completion
If you use the Bash shell, consider installing the Django bash completion
script, which lives in extras/django_bash_completion
in the Django source
distribution. It enables tab-completion of django-admin
and
manage.py
commands, so you can, for instance…
- Type
django-admin
. - Press [TAB] to see all available options.
- Type
sql
, then [TAB], to see all available options whose names start withsql
.
See Writing custom django-admin commands for how to add customized actions.
Running management commands from your code
-
django.core.management.
call_command
(name, *args, **options)
To call a management command from code use call_command
.
name
- the name of the command to call or a command object. Passing the name is preferred unless the object is required for testing.
*args
- a list of arguments accepted by the command. Arguments are passed to the
argument parser, so you can use the same style as you would on the command
line. For example,
call_command('flush', '--verbosity=0')
. **options
- named options accepted on the command-line. Options are passed to the command
without triggering the argument parser, which means you’ll need to pass the
correct type. For example,
call_command('flush', verbosity=0)
(zero must be an integer rather than a string).
Examples:
from django.core import management
from django.core.management.commands import loaddata
management.call_command('flush', verbosity=0, interactive=False)
management.call_command('loaddata', 'test_data', verbosity=0)
management.call_command(loaddata.Command(), 'test_data', verbosity=0)
Note that command options that take no arguments are passed as keywords
with True
or False
, as you can see with the interactive
option above.
Named arguments can be passed by using either one of the following syntaxes:
# Similar to the command line
management.call_command('dumpdata', '--natural-foreign')
# Named argument similar to the command line minus the initial dashes and
# with internal dashes replaced by underscores
management.call_command('dumpdata', natural_foreign=True)
# `use_natural_foreign_keys` is the option destination variable
management.call_command('dumpdata', use_natural_foreign_keys=True)
Some command options have different names when using call_command()
instead
of django-admin
or manage.py
. For example, django-admin
createsuperuser --no-input
translates to call_command('createsuperuser',
interactive=False)
. To find what keyword argument name to use for
call_command()
, check the command’s source code for the dest
argument
passed to parser.add_argument()
.
Command options which take multiple options are passed a list:
management.call_command('dumpdata', exclude=['contenttypes', 'auth'])
The return value of the call_command()
function is the same as the return
value of the handle()
method of the command.
Output redirection
Note that you can redirect standard output and error streams as all commands
support the stdout
and stderr
options. For example, you could write:
with open('/path/to/command_output') as f:
management.call_command('dumpdata', stdout=f)