ImproperlyConfigured: You must either define the e

Question

I was trying to configure my django project to deploy to heroku. I am getting the following error and I don't really know how to fix it.

Here is the full traceback and error:

22:46:15 web.1  | Traceback (most recent call last):
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gunicorn/arbiter.py", line 495, in spawn_worker
22:46:15 web.1  |     worker.init_process()
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gunicorn/workers/base.py", line 106, in init_process
22:46:15 web.1  |     self.wsgi = self.app.wsgi()
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gunicorn/app/base.py", line 114, in wsgi
22:46:15 web.1  |     self.callable = self.load()
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gunicorn/app/wsgiapp.py", line 62, in load
22:46:15 web.1  |     return self.load_wsgiapp()
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gunicorn/app/wsgiapp.py", line 49, in load_wsgiapp
22:46:15 web.1  |     return util.import_app(self.app_uri)
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gunicorn/util.py", line 354, in import_app
22:46:15 web.1  |     __import__(module)
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/nirla/wsgi.py", line 12, in <module>
22:46:15 web.1  |     from dj_static import Cling
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/dj_static.py", line 7, in <module>
22:46:15 web.1  |     from django.contrib.staticfiles.handlers import StaticFilesHandler as DebugHandler
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib/staticfiles/handlers.py", line 8, in <module>
22:46:15 web.1  |     from django.contrib.staticfiles.views import serve
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib/staticfiles/views.py", line 13, in <module>
22:46:15 web.1  |     from django.views import static
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/views/static.py", line 96, in <module>
22:46:15 web.1  |     template_translatable = ugettext_noop("Index of %(directory)s")
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/translation/__init__.py", line 65, in gettext_noop
22:46:15 web.1  |     return _trans.gettext_noop(message)
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/translation/__init__.py", line 52, in __getattr__
22:46:15 web.1  |     if settings.USE_I18N:
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 54, in __getattr__
22:46:15 web.1  |     self._setup(name)
22:46:15 web.1  |   File "/Users/nir/nirla/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 47, in _setup
22:46:15 web.1  |     % (desc, ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE))
22:46:15 web.1  | ImproperlyConfigured: Requested setting USE_I18N, but settings are not configured. You must either define the environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE or call settings.configure() before accessing settings.

Here is my wsgi.py file:

import os
from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
from dj_static import Cling

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "nirla.settings") #nirla is the name of the project


application = Cling(get_wsgi_application())

And in case it was relevant, my manage.py file:

import os
import sys

    if __name__ == "__main__":
        os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "nirla.settings")

        from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line

        execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)

Can anyone seem to understand the issue here? And if so, can you be so kind as to explain what is wrong? Thank you!

Answer 1

Django needs your application specific settings. Since it is already inside your manage.py just. The faster but perhaps temporary solution is::

python manage.py shell

Answer 2

Create a .env file that will hold your credentials at the root of your project and leave it out of versioning:

$ echo ".env" >> .gitignore

In the .env file, add the variables (adapt them according to your installation):

$ echo "DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings.production"> .env
#50 caracter random key
$ echo "SECRET_KEY='####'">> .env

To use them, put this on top of your production.py settings file:

import os

env = os.environ.copy()
SECRET_KEY = env['SECRET_KEY']

Publish it to Heroku using this gem: http://github.com/ddollar/heroku-config.git

$ heroku plugins:install git://github.com/ddollar/heroku-config.git
$ heroku config:push

This way you avoid to change virtualenv files.

*Based on this tutorial

Answer 3

From The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right:

If you’ve used Python before, you may be wondering why we’re running python manage.py shell instead of just python. Both commands will start the interactive interpreter, but the manage.py shell command has one key difference: before starting the interpreter, it tells Django which settings file to use.

"Use Case" :
Many parts of Django**, including the template system, rely on your settings, and you won’t be able to use them unless the framework knows which settings to use.

If you’re curious, here’s how it works behind the scenes. Django looks for an environment variable called DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE, which should be set to the import path of your settings.py. **For example, DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE might be set to 'mysite.settings', assuming mysite is on your Python path.

"Simply": When you run python manage.py shell, the command takes care of setting DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE for you.
We’re encouraging you to use python manage.py shell in these examples so as to minimize the amount of tweaking and configuring you have to do.

Answer 4

Use the following command:

python manage.py shell

This automatically set the django environment variables.

Answer 5

I figured that the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE had to be set some way, so I looked at the documentation (link updated) and found:

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=mysite.settings

Though that is not enough if you are running a server on heroku, you need to specify it there, too. Like this:

heroku config:set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=mysite.settings --account <your account name> 

In my specific case I ran these two and everything worked out:

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=nirla.settings
heroku config:set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=nirla.settings --account personal

---

Edit

I would also like to point out that you have to re-do this every time you close or restart your virtual environment. Instead, you should automate the process by going to venv/bin/activate and adding the line: set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=mysite.settings to the bottom of the code. From now on every time you activate the virtual environment, you will be using that app's settings.