Django Templates and Apps Not Loading

Question

The title says most of it. I'm running Unittests.py in PyCharm on a tutorial and my templates folder is nested directly beneath my app folder (superlists/lists/templates/home.html). So here's the test I'm running superlists/lists/tests.py:

def test_home_page_returns_correct_html(self):
    request = HttpRequest()

    response = home_page(request)
    expected_html = render_to_string('home.html')

    self.assertEqual(response.content.decode(), expected_html)

And here's the code it's being run on (superlists/lists/views.py)

def home_page(request):
    return render(request, 'home.html')

And here's the error:

   Error
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\utils.py", line 86, in __getitem__
    return self._engines[alias]
KeyError: 'django'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Me\PycharmProjects\superlists\lists\tests.py", line 19, in test_home_page_returns_correct_html
    response = home_page(request)
  File "C:\Users\Me\PycharmProjects\superlists\lists\views.py", line 8, in home_page
    return render(request, 'home.html')
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\shortcuts.py", line 67, in render
    template_name, context, request=request, using=using)
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\loader.py", line 96, in render_to_string
    template = get_template(template_name, using=using)
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\loader.py", line 26, in get_template
    engines = _engine_list(using)
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\loader.py", line 143, in _engine_list
    return engines.all() if using is None else [engines[using]]
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\utils.py", line 110, in all
    return [self[alias] for alias in self]
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\utils.py", line 110, in <listcomp>
    return [self[alias] for alias in self]
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\utils.py", line 101, in __getitem__
    engine = engine_cls(params)
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\backends\django.py", line 31, in __init__
    options['libraries'] = self.get_templatetag_libraries(libraries)
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\backends\django.py", line 49, in get_templatetag_libraries
    libraries = get_installed_libraries()
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\template\backends\django.py", line 121, in get_installed_libraries
    for app_config in apps.get_app_configs())
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\apps\registry.py", line 137, in get_app_configs
    self.check_apps_ready()
  File "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\site-packages\django\apps\registry.py", line 124, in check_apps_ready
    **raise AppRegistryNotReady("Apps aren't loaded yet.")
django.core.exceptions.AppRegistryNotReady: Apps aren't loaded yet.**

So, I checked two places in settings.py, INSTALLED_APPS and TEMPLATES.

Here's both sections:

    INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'lists',
]

and

    TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

Here's a short list of things I've tried:
*Changing the source code of tests.py and views.py to have most combinations of the path to home.html *Changing the path listed in INSTALLED_APPS and TEMPLATES to have most combinations of varying lengths to the paths of lists and home.html *Changing 'DIRS': [] to 'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')],

Sidenote: I've also had to repeatedly put DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=(project directory name).settings as an environment variable in PyCharm, using the solution to an error, here, because the other solutions didn't work, so, I recognize that my setup may be just a tad buggy.

Answer 1

Your problem isn't related to template, but wrong test configuration in PyCharm.

It seems you are using Python tests -> Unittests configuration for your tests, PyCharm provides a specific configuration for Django tests (it automatically loads the right django settings).

So follow this steps to configure it:

1. Go to the menu Run -> Edit Configurations...
2. Click on the green plus icon
3. Select Django tests
4. Optionally enter the Django app name in the Target field (lists in your case)

If you have configured your django project and python interpreter in your PyCharm settings it should work.

Hope this helps.