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Warning

Be careful when you override settings, especially when the default value is a non-empty tuple or dictionary, such as MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES and STATICFILES_FINDERS. Make sure you keep the components required by the features of Django you wish to use.

Core Settings

Here’s a list of settings available in Django core and their default values. Settings provided by contrib apps are listed below, followed by a topical index of the core settings. For introductory material, see the settings topic guide.

ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES

Default: {} (Empty dictionary)

A dictionary mapping "app_label.model_name" strings to functions that take a model object and return its URL. This is a way of inserting or overriding get_absolute_url() methods on a per-installation basis. Example:

ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES = {
    'blogs.weblog': lambda o: "/blogs/%s/" % o.slug,
    'news.story': lambda o: "/stories/%s/%s/" % (o.pub_year, o.slug),
}

Note that the model name used in this setting should be all lower-case, regardless of the case of the actual model class name.

Changed in Django 1.7.1:

ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES now works on models that don’t declare get_absolute_url().

ADMINS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

A tuple that lists people who get code error notifications. When DEBUG=False and a view raises an exception, Django will email these people with the full exception information. Each member of the tuple should be a tuple of (Full name, email address). Example:

(('John', '[e-mail]'), ('Mary', '[e-mail]'))

Note that Django will email all of these people whenever an error happens. See Error reporting for more information.

ALLOWED_HOSTS

Default: [] (Empty list)

A list of strings representing the host/domain names that this Django site can serve. This is a security measure to prevent an attacker from poisoning caches and triggering password reset emails with links to malicious hosts by submitting requests with a fake HTTP Host header, which is possible even under many seemingly-safe web server configurations.

Values in this list can be fully qualified names (e.g. 'www.example.com'), in which case they will be matched against the request’s Host header exactly (case-insensitive, not including port). A value beginning with a period can be used as a subdomain wildcard: '.example.com' will match example.com, www.example.com, and any other subdomain of example.com. A value of '*' will match anything; in this case you are responsible to provide your own validation of the Host header (perhaps in a middleware; if so this middleware must be listed first in MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES).

Changed in Django 1.7:

In previous versions of Django, if you wanted to also allow the fully qualified domain name (FQDN), which some browsers can send in the Host header, you had to explicitly add another ALLOWED_HOSTS entry that included a trailing period. This entry could also be a subdomain wildcard:

ALLOWED_HOSTS = [
    '.example.com',  # Allow domain and subdomains
    '.example.com.',  # Also allow FQDN and subdomains
]

In Django 1.7, the trailing dot is stripped when performing host validation, thus an entry with a trailing dot isn’t required.

If the Host header (or X-Forwarded-Host if USE_X_FORWARDED_HOST is enabled) does not match any value in this list, the django.http.HttpRequest.get_host() method will raise SuspiciousOperation.

When DEBUG is True and ALLOWED_HOSTS is empty, the host is validated against ['localhost', '127.0.0.1', '[::1]'].

This validation only applies via get_host(); if your code accesses the Host header directly from request.META you are bypassing this security protection.

Changed in Django 1.8.16:

In older versions, ALLOWED_HOSTS wasn’t checked if DEBUG=True, but it’s now checked to prevent a DNS rebinding attack.

ALLOWED_INCLUDE_ROOTS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

Deprecated since version 1.8: This setting, along with the ssi template tag, is deprecated and will be removed in Django 1.10.

Changed in Django 1.8:

You can also set the 'allowed_include_roots' option in the OPTIONS of a DjangoTemplates backend instead.

A tuple of strings representing allowed prefixes for the {% ssi %} template tag. This is a security measure, so that template authors can’t access files that they shouldn’t be accessing.

For example, if ALLOWED_INCLUDE_ROOTS is ('/home/html', '/var/www'), then {% ssi /home/html/foo.txt %} would work, but {% ssi /etc/passwd %} wouldn’t.

APPEND_SLASH

Default: True

When set to True, if the request URL does not match any of the patterns in the URLconf and it doesn’t end in a slash, an HTTP redirect is issued to the same URL with a slash appended. Note that the redirect may cause any data submitted in a POST request to be lost.

The APPEND_SLASH setting is only used if CommonMiddleware is installed (see Middleware). See also PREPEND_WWW.

CACHES

Default:

{
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.locmem.LocMemCache',
    }
}

A dictionary containing the settings for all caches to be used with Django. It is a nested dictionary whose contents maps cache aliases to a dictionary containing the options for an individual cache.

The CACHES setting must configure a default cache; any number of additional caches may also be specified. If you are using a cache backend other than the local memory cache, or you need to define multiple caches, other options will be required. The following cache options are available.

BACKEND

Default: '' (Empty string)

The cache backend to use. The built-in cache backends are:

• 'django.core.cache.backends.db.DatabaseCache'
• 'django.core.cache.backends.dummy.DummyCache'
• 'django.core.cache.backends.filebased.FileBasedCache'
• 'django.core.cache.backends.locmem.LocMemCache'
• 'django.core.cache.backends.memcached.MemcachedCache'
• 'django.core.cache.backends.memcached.PyLibMCCache'

You can use a cache backend that doesn’t ship with Django by setting BACKEND to a fully-qualified path of a cache backend class (i.e. mypackage.backends.whatever.WhateverCache).

KEY_FUNCTION

A string containing a dotted path to a function (or any callable) that defines how to compose a prefix, version and key into a final cache key. The default implementation is equivalent to the function:

def make_key(key, key_prefix, version):
    return ':'.join([key_prefix, str(version), key])

You may use any key function you want, as long as it has the same argument signature.

See the cache documentation for more information.

KEY_PREFIX

Default: '' (Empty string)

A string that will be automatically included (prepended by default) to all cache keys used by the Django server.

See the cache documentation for more information.

LOCATION

Default: '' (Empty string)

The location of the cache to use. This might be the directory for a file system cache, a host and port for a memcache server, or simply an identifying name for a local memory cache. e.g.:

CACHES = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.filebased.FileBasedCache',
        'LOCATION': '/var/tmp/django_cache',
    }
}

OPTIONS

Default: None

Extra parameters to pass to the cache backend. Available parameters vary depending on your cache backend.

Some information on available parameters can be found in the Cache Backends documentation. For more information, consult your backend module’s own documentation.

TIMEOUT

Default: 300

The number of seconds before a cache entry is considered stale.

New in Django 1.7.

If the value of this settings is None, cache entries will not expire.

VERSION

Default: 1

The default version number for cache keys generated by the Django server.

See the cache documentation for more information.

CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_ALIAS

Default: default

The cache connection to use for the cache middleware.

CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_KEY_PREFIX

Default: '' (Empty string)

A string which will be prefixed to the cache keys generated by the cache middleware. This prefix is combined with the KEY_PREFIX setting; it does not replace it.

See Django’s cache framework.

CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_SECONDS

Default: 600

The default number of seconds to cache a page for the cache middleware.

See Django’s cache framework.

CSRF_COOKIE_AGE

New in Django 1.7.

Default: 31449600 (approximately 1 year, in seconds)

The age of CSRF cookies, in seconds.

The reason for setting a long-lived expiration time is to avoid problems in the case of a user closing a browser or bookmarking a page and then loading that page from a browser cache. Without persistent cookies, the form submission would fail in this case.

Some browsers (specifically Internet Explorer) can disallow the use of persistent cookies or can have the indexes to the cookie jar corrupted on disk, thereby causing CSRF protection checks to (sometimes intermittently) fail. Change this setting to None to use session-based CSRF cookies, which keep the cookies in-memory instead of on persistent storage.

CSRF_COOKIE_DOMAIN

Default: None

The domain to be used when setting the CSRF cookie. This can be useful for easily allowing cross-subdomain requests to be excluded from the normal cross site request forgery protection. It should be set to a string such as ".example.com" to allow a POST request from a form on one subdomain to be accepted by a view served from another subdomain.

Please note that the presence of this setting does not imply that Django’s CSRF protection is safe from cross-subdomain attacks by default - please see the CSRF limitations section.

CSRF_COOKIE_HTTPONLY

Default: False

Whether to use HttpOnly flag on the CSRF cookie. If this is set to True, client-side JavaScript will not to be able to access the CSRF cookie.

This can help prevent malicious JavaScript from bypassing CSRF protection. If you enable this and need to send the value of the CSRF token with Ajax requests, your JavaScript will need to pull the value from a hidden CSRF token form input on the page instead of from the cookie.

See SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY for details on HttpOnly.

CSRF_COOKIE_NAME

Default: 'csrftoken'

The name of the cookie to use for the CSRF authentication token. This can be whatever you want (as long as it’s different from the other cookie names in your application). See Cross Site Request Forgery protection.

CSRF_COOKIE_PATH

Default: '/'

The path set on the CSRF cookie. This should either match the URL path of your Django installation or be a parent of that path.

This is useful if you have multiple Django instances running under the same hostname. They can use different cookie paths, and each instance will only see its own CSRF cookie.

CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE

Default: False

Whether to use a secure cookie for the CSRF cookie. If this is set to True, the cookie will be marked as “secure,” which means browsers may ensure that the cookie is only sent with an HTTPS connection.

CSRF_FAILURE_VIEW

Default: 'django.views.csrf.csrf_failure'

A dotted path to the view function to be used when an incoming request is rejected by the CSRF protection. The function should have this signature:

def csrf_failure(request, reason=""):
    ...

where reason is a short message (intended for developers or logging, not for end users) indicating the reason the request was rejected. See Cross Site Request Forgery protection.

DATABASES

Default: {} (Empty dictionary)

A dictionary containing the settings for all databases to be used with Django. It is a nested dictionary whose contents map a database alias to a dictionary containing the options for an individual database.

The DATABASES setting must configure a default database; any number of additional databases may also be specified.

The simplest possible settings file is for a single-database setup using SQLite. This can be configured using the following:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': 'mydatabase',
    }
}

When connecting to other database backends, such as MySQL, Oracle, or PostgreSQL, additional connection parameters will be required. See the ENGINE setting below on how to specify other database types. This example is for PostgreSQL:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': 'mydatabase',
        'USER': 'mydatabaseuser',
        'PASSWORD': 'mypassword',
        'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
        'PORT': '5432',
    }
}

The following inner options that may be required for more complex configurations are available:

ATOMIC_REQUESTS

Default: False

Set this to True to wrap each view in a transaction on this database. See Tying transactions to HTTP requests.

AUTOCOMMIT

Default: True

Set this to False if you want to disable Django’s transaction management and implement your own.

ENGINE

Default: '' (Empty string)

The database backend to use. The built-in database backends are:

• 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2'
• 'django.db.backends.mysql'
• 'django.db.backends.sqlite3'
• 'django.db.backends.oracle'

You can use a database backend that doesn’t ship with Django by setting ENGINE to a fully-qualified path (i.e. mypackage.backends.whatever).

HOST

Default: '' (Empty string)

Which host to use when connecting to the database. An empty string means localhost. Not used with SQLite.

If this value starts with a forward slash ('/') and you’re using MySQL, MySQL will connect via a Unix socket to the specified socket. For example:

"HOST": '/var/run/mysql'

If you’re using MySQL and this value doesn’t start with a forward slash, then this value is assumed to be the host.

If you’re using PostgreSQL, by default (empty HOST), the connection to the database is done through UNIX domain sockets (‘local’ lines in pg_hba.conf). If your UNIX domain socket is not in the standard location, use the same value of unix_socket_directory from postgresql.conf. If you want to connect through TCP sockets, set HOST to ‘localhost’ or ‘127.0.0.1’ (‘host’ lines in pg_hba.conf). On Windows, you should always define HOST, as UNIX domain sockets are not available.

NAME

Default: '' (Empty string)

The name of the database to use. For SQLite, it’s the full path to the database file. When specifying the path, always use forward slashes, even on Windows (e.g. C:/homes/user/mysite/sqlite3.db).

CONN_MAX_AGE

Default: 0

The lifetime of a database connection, in seconds. Use 0 to close database connections at the end of each request — Django’s historical behavior — and None for unlimited persistent connections.

OPTIONS

Default: {} (Empty dictionary)

Extra parameters to use when connecting to the database. Available parameters vary depending on your database backend.

Some information on available parameters can be found in the Database Backends documentation. For more information, consult your backend module’s own documentation.

PASSWORD

Default: '' (Empty string)

The password to use when connecting to the database. Not used with SQLite.

PORT

Default: '' (Empty string)

The port to use when connecting to the database. An empty string means the default port. Not used with SQLite.

USER

Default: '' (Empty string)

The username to use when connecting to the database. Not used with SQLite.

TEST

Changed in Django 1.7:

All TEST sub-entries used to be independent entries in the database settings dictionary, with a TEST_ prefix. For backwards compatibility with older versions of Django, you can define both versions of the settings as long as they match. Further, TEST_CREATE, TEST_USER_CREATE and TEST_PASSWD were changed to CREATE_DB, CREATE_USER and PASSWORD respectively.

Default: {}

A dictionary of settings for test databases; for more details about the creation and use of test databases, see The test database.

Here’s an example with a test database configuration:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
        'USER': 'mydatabaseuser',
        'NAME': 'mydatabase',
        'TEST': {
            'NAME': 'mytestdatabase',
        },
    },
}

The following keys in the TEST dictionary are available:

CHARSET

Default: None

The character set encoding used to create the test database. The value of this string is passed directly through to the database, so its format is backend-specific.

Supported for the PostgreSQL (postgresql_psycopg2) and MySQL (mysql) backends.

COLLATION

Default: None

The collation order to use when creating the test database. This value is passed directly to the backend, so its format is backend-specific.

Only supported for the mysql backend (see the MySQL manual for details).

DEPENDENCIES

Default: ['default'], for all databases other than default, which has no dependencies.

The creation-order dependencies of the database. See the documentation on controlling the creation order of test databases for details.

MIRROR

Default: None

The alias of the database that this database should mirror during testing.

This setting exists to allow for testing of primary/replica (referred to as master/slave by some databases) configurations of multiple databases. See the documentation on testing primary/replica configurations for details.

NAME

Default: None

The name of database to use when running the test suite.

If the default value (None) is used with the SQLite database engine, the tests will use a memory resident database. For all other database engines the test database will use the name 'test_' + DATABASE_NAME.

See The test database.

SERIALIZE

New in Django 1.7.1.

Boolean value to control whether or not the default test runner serializes the database into an in-memory JSON string before running tests (used to restore the database state between tests if you don’t have transactions). You can set this to False to speed up creation time if you don’t have any test classes with serialized_rollback=True.

CREATE_DB

Default: True

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

If it is set to False, the test tablespaces won’t be automatically created at the beginning of the tests or dropped at the end.

CREATE_USER

Default: True

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

If it is set to False, the test user won’t be automatically created at the beginning of the tests and dropped at the end.

USER

Default: None

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

The username to use when connecting to the Oracle database that will be used when running tests. If not provided, Django will use 'test_' + USER.

PASSWORD

Default: None

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

The password to use when connecting to the Oracle database that will be used when running tests. If not provided, Django will generate a random password.

Changed in Django 1.8.16:

Older versions used a hardcoded default password.

TBLSPACE

Default: None

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

The name of the tablespace that will be used when running tests. If not provided, Django will use 'test_' + USER.

Changed in Django 1.8:

Previously Django used 'test_' + NAME if not provided.

TBLSPACE_TMP

Default: None

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

The name of the temporary tablespace that will be used when running tests. If not provided, Django will use 'test_' + USER + '_temp'.

Changed in Django 1.8:

Previously Django used 'test_' + NAME + '_temp' if not provided.

DATAFILE

New in Django 1.8.

Default: None

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

The name of the datafile to use for the TBLSPACE. If not provided, Django will use TBLSPACE + '.dbf'.

DATAFILE_TMP

New in Django 1.8.

Default: None

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

The name of the datafile to use for the TBLSPACE_TMP. If not provided, Django will use TBLSPACE_TMP + '.dbf'.

DATAFILE_MAXSIZE

New in Django 1.8.

Default: '500M'

Changed in Django 1.8:

The previous value was 200M and was not user customizable.

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

The maximum size that the DATAFILE is allowed to grow to.

DATAFILE_TMP_MAXSIZE

New in Django 1.8.

Default: '500M'

Changed in Django 1.8:

The previous value was 200M and was not user customizable.

This is an Oracle-specific setting.

The maximum size that the DATAFILE_TMP is allowed to grow to.

TEST_CHARSET

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the CHARSET entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_COLLATION

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the COLLATION entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_DEPENDENCIES

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the DEPENDENCIES entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_MIRROR

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the MIRROR entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_NAME

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the NAME entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_CREATE

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the CREATE_DB entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_USER

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the USER entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_USER_CREATE

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the CREATE_USER entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_PASSWD

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the PASSWORD entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_TBLSPACE

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the TBLSPACE entry in the TEST dictionary.

TEST_TBLSPACE_TMP

Deprecated since version 1.7: Use the TBLSPACE_TMP entry in the TEST dictionary.

DATABASE_ROUTERS

Default: [] (Empty list)

The list of routers that will be used to determine which database to use when performing a database query.

See the documentation on automatic database routing in multi database configurations.

DATE_FORMAT

Default: 'N j, Y' (e.g. Feb. 4, 2003)

The default formatting to use for displaying date fields in any part of the system. Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied instead. See allowed date format strings.

See also DATETIME_FORMAT, TIME_FORMAT and SHORT_DATE_FORMAT.

DATE_INPUT_FORMATS

Default:

(
    '%Y-%m-%d', '%m/%d/%Y', '%m/%d/%y', # '2006-10-25', '10/25/2006', '10/25/06'
    '%b %d %Y', '%b %d, %Y',            # 'Oct 25 2006', 'Oct 25, 2006'
    '%d %b %Y', '%d %b, %Y',            # '25 Oct 2006', '25 Oct, 2006'
    '%B %d %Y', '%B %d, %Y',            # 'October 25 2006', 'October 25, 2006'
    '%d %B %Y', '%d %B, %Y',            # '25 October 2006', '25 October, 2006'
)

A tuple of formats that will be accepted when inputting data on a date field. Formats will be tried in order, using the first valid one. Note that these format strings use Python’s datetime module syntax, not the format strings from the date Django template tag.

When USE_L10N is True, the locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied instead.

See also DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS and TIME_INPUT_FORMATS.

DATETIME_FORMAT

Default: 'N j, Y, P' (e.g. Feb. 4, 2003, 4 p.m.)

The default formatting to use for displaying datetime fields in any part of the system. Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied instead. See allowed date format strings.

See also DATE_FORMAT, TIME_FORMAT and SHORT_DATETIME_FORMAT.

DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS

Default:

(
    '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S',     # '2006-10-25 14:30:59'
    '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f',  # '2006-10-25 14:30:59.000200'
    '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M',        # '2006-10-25 14:30'
    '%Y-%m-%d',              # '2006-10-25'
    '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S',     # '10/25/2006 14:30:59'
    '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S.%f',  # '10/25/2006 14:30:59.000200'
    '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M',        # '10/25/2006 14:30'
    '%m/%d/%Y',              # '10/25/2006'
    '%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S',     # '10/25/06 14:30:59'
    '%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S.%f',  # '10/25/06 14:30:59.000200'
    '%m/%d/%y %H:%M',        # '10/25/06 14:30'
    '%m/%d/%y',              # '10/25/06'
)

A tuple of formats that will be accepted when inputting data on a datetime field. Formats will be tried in order, using the first valid one. Note that these format strings use Python’s datetime module syntax, not the format strings from the date Django template tag.

When USE_L10N is True, the locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied instead.

See also DATE_INPUT_FORMATS and TIME_INPUT_FORMATS.

DEBUG

Default: False

A boolean that turns on/off debug mode.

Never deploy a site into production with DEBUG turned on.

Did you catch that? NEVER deploy a site into production with DEBUG turned on.

One of the main features of debug mode is the display of detailed error pages. If your app raises an exception when DEBUG is True, Django will display a detailed traceback, including a lot of metadata about your environment, such as all the currently defined Django settings (from settings.py).

As a security measure, Django will not include settings that might be sensitive (or offensive), such as SECRET_KEY. Specifically, it will exclude any setting whose name includes any of the following:

• 'API'
• 'KEY'
• 'PASS'
• 'SECRET'
• 'SIGNATURE'
• 'TOKEN'

Note that these are partial matches. 'PASS' will also match PASSWORD, just as 'TOKEN' will also match TOKENIZED and so on.

Still, note that there are always going to be sections of your debug output that are inappropriate for public consumption. File paths, configuration options and the like all give attackers extra information about your server.

It is also important to remember that when running with DEBUG turned on, Django will remember every SQL query it executes. This is useful when you’re debugging, but it’ll rapidly consume memory on a production server.

Finally, if DEBUG is False, you also need to properly set the ALLOWED_HOSTS setting. Failing to do so will result in all requests being returned as “Bad Request (400)”.

Note

The default settings.py file created by django-admin startproject sets DEBUG = True for convenience.

DEBUG_PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS

Default: False

If set to True, Django’s normal exception handling of view functions will be suppressed, and exceptions will propagate upwards. This can be useful for some test setups, and should never be used on a live site.

DECIMAL_SEPARATOR

Default: '.' (Dot)

Default decimal separator used when formatting decimal numbers.

Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied instead.

See also NUMBER_GROUPING, THOUSAND_SEPARATOR and USE_THOUSAND_SEPARATOR.

DEFAULT_CHARSET

Default: 'utf-8'

Default charset to use for all HttpResponse objects, if a MIME type isn’t manually specified. Used with DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE to construct the Content-Type header.

DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE

Default: 'text/html'

Default content type to use for all HttpResponse objects, if a MIME type isn’t manually specified. Used with DEFAULT_CHARSET to construct the Content-Type header.

DEFAULT_EXCEPTION_REPORTER_FILTER

Default: django.views.debug.SafeExceptionReporterFilter

Default exception reporter filter class to be used if none has been assigned to the HttpRequest instance yet. See Filtering error reports.

DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE

Default: django.core.files.storage.FileSystemStorage

Default file storage class to be used for any file-related operations that don’t specify a particular storage system. See Managing files.

DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL

Default: 'webmaster@localhost'

Default email address to use for various automated correspondence from the site manager(s). This doesn’t include error messages sent to ADMINS and MANAGERS; for that, see SERVER_EMAIL.

DEFAULT_INDEX_TABLESPACE

Default: '' (Empty string)

Default tablespace to use for indexes on fields that don’t specify one, if the backend supports it (see Tablespaces).

DEFAULT_TABLESPACE

Default: '' (Empty string)

Default tablespace to use for models that don’t specify one, if the backend supports it (see Tablespaces).

DISALLOWED_USER_AGENTS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

List of compiled regular expression objects representing User-Agent strings that are not allowed to visit any page, systemwide. Use this for bad robots/crawlers. This is only used if CommonMiddleware is installed (see Middleware).

EMAIL_BACKEND

Default: 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'

The backend to use for sending emails. For the list of available backends see Sending email.

EMAIL_FILE_PATH

Default: Not defined

The directory used by the file email backend to store output files.

EMAIL_HOST

Default: 'localhost'

The host to use for sending email.

See also EMAIL_PORT.

EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD

Default: '' (Empty string)

Password to use for the SMTP server defined in EMAIL_HOST. This setting is used in conjunction with EMAIL_HOST_USER when authenticating to the SMTP server. If either of these settings is empty, Django won’t attempt authentication.

See also EMAIL_HOST_USER.

EMAIL_HOST_USER

Default: '' (Empty string)

Username to use for the SMTP server defined in EMAIL_HOST. If empty, Django won’t attempt authentication.

See also EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD.

EMAIL_PORT

Default: 25

Port to use for the SMTP server defined in EMAIL_HOST.

EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX

Default: '[Django] '

Subject-line prefix for email messages sent with django.core.mail.mail_admins or django.core.mail.mail_managers. You’ll probably want to include the trailing space.

EMAIL_USE_TLS

Default: False

Whether to use a TLS (secure) connection when talking to the SMTP server. This is used for explicit TLS connections, generally on port 587. If you are experiencing hanging connections, see the implicit TLS setting EMAIL_USE_SSL.

EMAIL_USE_SSL

New in Django 1.7.

Default: False

Whether to use an implicit TLS (secure) connection when talking to the SMTP server. In most email documentation this type of TLS connection is referred to as SSL. It is generally used on port 465. If you are experiencing problems, see the explicit TLS setting EMAIL_USE_TLS.

Note that EMAIL_USE_TLS/EMAIL_USE_SSL are mutually exclusive, so only set one of those settings to True.

EMAIL_SSL_CERTFILE

New in Django 1.8.

Default: None

If EMAIL_USE_SSL or EMAIL_USE_TLS is True, you can optionally specify the path to a PEM-formatted certificate chain file to use for the SSL connection.

EMAIL_SSL_KEYFILE

New in Django 1.8.

Default: None

If EMAIL_USE_SSL or EMAIL_USE_TLS is True, you can optionally specify the path to a PEM-formatted private key file to use for the SSL connection.

Note that setting EMAIL_SSL_CERTFILE and EMAIL_SSL_KEYFILE doesn’t result in any certificate checking. They’re passed to the underlying SSL connection. Please refer to the documentation of Python’s ssl.wrap_socket() function for details on how the certificate chain file and private key file are handled.

EMAIL_TIMEOUT

New in Django 1.8.

Default: None

Specifies a timeout in seconds for blocking operations like the connection attempt.

FILE_CHARSET

Default: 'utf-8'

The character encoding used to decode any files read from disk. This includes template files and initial SQL data files.

FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS

Default:

("django.core.files.uploadhandler.MemoryFileUploadHandler",
 "django.core.files.uploadhandler.TemporaryFileUploadHandler")

A tuple of handlers to use for uploading. Changing this setting allows complete customization – even replacement – of Django’s upload process.

See Managing files for details.

FILE_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE

Default: 2621440 (i.e. 2.5 MB).

The maximum size (in bytes) that an upload will be before it gets streamed to the file system. See Managing files for details.

FILE_UPLOAD_DIRECTORY_PERMISSIONS

New in Django 1.7.

Default: None

The numeric mode to apply to directories created in the process of uploading files.

This setting also determines the default permissions for collected static directories when using the collectstatic management command. See collectstatic for details on overriding it.

This value mirrors the functionality and caveats of the FILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS setting.

FILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS

Default: None

The numeric mode (i.e. 0o644) to set newly uploaded files to. For more information about what these modes mean, see the documentation for os.chmod().

If this isn’t given or is None, you’ll get operating-system dependent behavior. On most platforms, temporary files will have a mode of 0o600, and files saved from memory will be saved using the system’s standard umask.

For security reasons, these permissions aren’t applied to the temporary files that are stored in FILE_UPLOAD_TEMP_DIR.

This setting also determines the default permissions for collected static files when using the collectstatic management command. See collectstatic for details on overriding it.

Warning

Always prefix the mode with a 0.

If you’re not familiar with file modes, please note that the leading 0 is very important: it indicates an octal number, which is the way that modes must be specified. If you try to use 644, you’ll get totally incorrect behavior.

FILE_UPLOAD_TEMP_DIR

Default: None

The directory to store data to (typically files larger than FILE_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE) temporarily while uploading files. If None, Django will use the standard temporary directory for the operating system. For example, this will default to /tmp on *nix-style operating systems.

See Managing files for details.

FIRST_DAY_OF_WEEK

Default: 0 (Sunday)

A number representing the first day of the week. This is especially useful when displaying a calendar. This value is only used when not using format internationalization, or when a format cannot be found for the current locale.

The value must be an integer from 0 to 6, where 0 means Sunday, 1 means Monday and so on.

FIXTURE_DIRS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

List of directories searched for fixture files, in addition to the fixtures directory of each application, in search order.

Note that these paths should use Unix-style forward slashes, even on Windows.

See Providing initial data with fixtures and Fixture loading.

FORCE_SCRIPT_NAME

Default: None

If not None, this will be used as the value of the SCRIPT_NAME environment variable in any HTTP request. This setting can be used to override the server-provided value of SCRIPT_NAME, which may be a rewritten version of the preferred value or not supplied at all.

FORMAT_MODULE_PATH

Default: None

A full Python path to a Python package that contains format definitions for project locales. If not None, Django will check for a formats.py file, under the directory named as the current locale, and will use the formats defined in this file.

For example, if FORMAT_MODULE_PATH is set to mysite.formats, and current language is en (English), Django will expect a directory tree like:

mysite/
    formats/
        __init__.py
        en/
            __init__.py
            formats.py

Changed in Django 1.8:

You can also set this setting to a list of Python paths, for example:

FORMAT_MODULE_PATH = [
    'mysite.formats',
    'some_app.formats',
]

When Django searches for a certain format, it will go through all given Python paths until it finds a module that actually defines the given format. This means that formats defined in packages farther up in the list will take precedence over the same formats in packages farther down.

Available formats are DATE_FORMAT, TIME_FORMAT, DATETIME_FORMAT, YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT, MONTH_DAY_FORMAT, SHORT_DATE_FORMAT, SHORT_DATETIME_FORMAT, FIRST_DAY_OF_WEEK, DECIMAL_SEPARATOR, THOUSAND_SEPARATOR and NUMBER_GROUPING.

IGNORABLE_404_URLS

Default: ()

List of compiled regular expression objects describing URLs that should be ignored when reporting HTTP 404 errors via email (see Error reporting). Regular expressions are matched against request's full paths (including query string, if any). Use this if your site does not provide a commonly requested file such as favicon.ico or robots.txt, or if it gets hammered by script kiddies.

This is only used if BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware is enabled (see Middleware).

INSTALLED_APPS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

A tuple of strings designating all applications that are enabled in this Django installation. Each string should be a dotted Python path to:

• an application configuration class, or
• a package containing an application.

Learn more about application configurations.

Changed in Django 1.7:

INSTALLED_APPS now supports application configurations.

Use the application registry for introspection

Your code should never access INSTALLED_APPS directly. Use django.apps.apps instead.

Application names and labels must be unique in INSTALLED_APPS

Application names — the dotted Python path to the application package — must be unique. There is no way to include the same application twice, short of duplicating its code under another name.

Application labels — by default the final part of the name — must be unique too. For example, you can’t include both django.contrib.auth and myproject.auth. However, you can relabel an application with a custom configuration that defines a different label.

These rules apply regardless of whether INSTALLED_APPS references application configuration classes or application packages.

When several applications provide different versions of the same resource (template, static file, management command, translation), the application listed first in INSTALLED_APPS has precedence.

INTERNAL_IPS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

A tuple of IP addresses, as strings, that:

• Allow the debug() context processor to add some variables to the template context.
• Can use the admindocs bookmarklets even if not logged in as a staff user.
• Are marked as “internal” (as opposed to “EXTERNAL”) in AdminEmailHandler emails.

LANGUAGE_CODE

Default: 'en-us'

A string representing the language code for this installation. This should be in standard language ID format. For example, U.S. English is "en-us". See also the list of language identifiers and Internationalization and localization.

USE_I18N must be active for this setting to have any effect.

It serves two purposes:

• If the locale middleware isn’t in use, it decides which translation is served to all users.
• If the locale middleware is active, it provides a fallback language in case the user’s preferred language can’t be determined or is not supported by the Web site. It also provides the fallback translation when a translation for a given literal doesn’t exist for the user’s preferred language.

Changed in Django 1.8:

The fallback for translation literals was added.

See How Django discovers language preference for more details.

LANGUAGE_COOKIE_AGE

New in Django 1.7.

Default: None (expires at browser close)

The age of the language cookie, in seconds.

LANGUAGE_COOKIE_DOMAIN

New in Django 1.7.

Default: None

The domain to use for the language cookie. Set this to a string such as ".example.com" (note the leading dot!) for cross-domain cookies, or use None for a standard domain cookie.

Be cautious when updating this setting on a production site. If you update this setting to enable cross-domain cookies on a site that previously used standard domain cookies, existing user cookies that have the old domain will not be updated. This will result in site users being unable to switch the language as long as these cookies persist. The only safe and reliable option to perform the switch is to change the language cookie name permanently (via the LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME setting) and to add a middleware that copies the value from the old cookie to a new one and then deletes the old one.

LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME

Default: 'django_language'

The name of the cookie to use for the language cookie. This can be whatever you want (as long as it’s different from the other cookie names in your application). See Internationalization and localization.

LANGUAGE_COOKIE_PATH

New in Django 1.7.

Default: /

The path set on the language cookie. This should either match the URL path of your Django installation or be a parent of that path.

This is useful if you have multiple Django instances running under the same hostname. They can use different cookie paths and each instance will only see its own language cookie.

Be cautious when updating this setting on a production site. If you update this setting to use a deeper path than it previously used, existing user cookies that have the old path will not be updated. This will result in site users being unable to switch the language as long as these cookies persist. The only safe and reliable option to perform the switch is to change the language cookie name permanently (via the LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME setting), and to add a middleware that copies the value from the old cookie to a new one and then deletes the one.

LANGUAGES

Default: A tuple of all available languages. This list is continually growing and including a copy here would inevitably become rapidly out of date. You can see the current list of translated languages by looking in django/conf/global_settings.py (or view the online source).

The list is a tuple of two-tuples in the format (language code, language name) – for example, ('ja', 'Japanese'). This specifies which languages are available for language selection. See Internationalization and localization.

Generally, the default value should suffice. Only set this setting if you want to restrict language selection to a subset of the Django-provided languages.

If you define a custom LANGUAGES setting, you can mark the language names as translation strings using the ugettext_lazy() function.

Here’s a sample settings file:

from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

LANGUAGES = (
    ('de', _('German')),
    ('en', _('English')),
)

LOCALE_PATHS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

A tuple of directories where Django looks for translation files. See How Django discovers translations.

Example:

LOCALE_PATHS = (
    '/home/www/project/common_files/locale',
    '/var/local/translations/locale',
)

Django will look within each of these paths for the <locale_code>/LC_MESSAGES directories containing the actual translation files.

LOGGING

Default: A logging configuration dictionary.

A data structure containing configuration information. The contents of this data structure will be passed as the argument to the configuration method described in LOGGING_CONFIG.

Among other things, the default logging configuration passes HTTP 500 server errors to an email log handler when DEBUG is False. See also Configuring logging.

You can see the default logging configuration by looking in django/utils/log.py (or view the online source).

LOGGING_CONFIG

Default: 'logging.config.dictConfig'

A path to a callable that will be used to configure logging in the Django project. Points at a instance of Python’s dictConfig configuration method by default.

If you set LOGGING_CONFIG to None, the logging configuration process will be skipped.

Changed in Django 1.7:

Previously, the default value was 'django.utils.log.dictConfig'.

MANAGERS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

A tuple in the same format as ADMINS that specifies who should get broken link notifications when BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware is enabled.

MEDIA_ROOT

Default: '' (Empty string)

Absolute filesystem path to the directory that will hold user-uploaded files.

Example: "/var/www/example.com/media/"

See also MEDIA_URL.

Warning

MEDIA_ROOT and STATIC_ROOT must have different values. Before STATIC_ROOT was introduced, it was common to rely or fallback on MEDIA_ROOT to also serve static files; however, since this can have serious security implications, there is a validation check to prevent it.

MEDIA_URL

Default: '' (Empty string)

URL that handles the media served from MEDIA_ROOT, used for managing stored files. It must end in a slash if set to a non-empty value. You will need to configure these files to be served in both development and production environments.

If you want to use {{ MEDIA_URL }} in your templates, add 'django.template.context_processors.media' in the 'context_processors' option of TEMPLATES.

Example: "http://media.example.com/"

Warning

There are security risks if you are accepting uploaded content from untrusted users! See the security guide’s topic on User-uploaded content for mitigation details.

Warning

MEDIA_URL and STATIC_URL must have different values. See MEDIA_ROOT for more details.

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES

Default:

('django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware')

A tuple of middleware classes to use. See Middleware.

Changed in Django 1.7:

SessionMiddleware, AuthenticationMiddleware, and MessageMiddleware were removed from this setting.

MIGRATION_MODULES

Default:

{}  # empty dictionary

A dictionary specifying the package where migration modules can be found on a per-app basis. The default value of this setting is an empty dictionary, but the default package name for migration modules is migrations.

Example:

{'blog': 'blog.db_migrations'}

In this case, migrations pertaining to the blog app will be contained in the blog.db_migrations package.

If you provide the app_label argument, makemigrations will automatically create the package if it doesn’t already exist.

MONTH_DAY_FORMAT

Default: 'F j'

The default formatting to use for date fields on Django admin change-list pages – and, possibly, by other parts of the system – in cases when only the month and day are displayed.

For example, when a Django admin change-list page is being filtered by a date drilldown, the header for a given day displays the day and month. Different locales have different formats. For example, U.S. English would say “January 1,” whereas Spanish might say “1 Enero.”

Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the corresponding locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied.

See allowed date format strings. See also DATE_FORMAT, DATETIME_FORMAT, TIME_FORMAT and YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT.

NUMBER_GROUPING

Default: 0

Number of digits grouped together on the integer part of a number.

Common use is to display a thousand separator. If this setting is 0, then no grouping will be applied to the number. If this setting is greater than 0, then THOUSAND_SEPARATOR will be used as the separator between those groups.

Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied instead.

See also DECIMAL_SEPARATOR, THOUSAND_SEPARATOR and USE_THOUSAND_SEPARATOR.

PREPEND_WWW

Default: False

Whether to prepend the “www.” subdomain to URLs that don’t have it. This is only used if CommonMiddleware is installed (see Middleware). See also APPEND_SLASH.

ROOT_URLCONF

Default: Not defined

A string representing the full Python import path to your root URLconf. For example: "mydjangoapps.urls". Can be overridden on a per-request basis by setting the attribute urlconf on the incoming HttpRequest object. See How Django processes a request for details.

SECRET_KEY

Default: '' (Empty string)

A secret key for a particular Django installation. This is used to provide cryptographic signing, and should be set to a unique, unpredictable value.

django-admin startproject automatically adds a randomly-generated SECRET_KEY to each new project.

Django will refuse to start if SECRET_KEY is not set.

Warning

Keep this value secret.

Running Django with a known SECRET_KEY defeats many of Django’s security protections, and can lead to privilege escalation and remote code execution vulnerabilities.

The secret key is used for:

• All sessions if you are using any other session backend than django.contrib.sessions.backends.cache, or if you use SessionAuthenticationMiddleware and are using the default get_session_auth_hash().
• All messages if you are using CookieStorage or FallbackStorage.
• Form wizard progress when using cookie storage with formtools.wizard.views.CookieWizardView.
• All password_reset() tokens.
• All in progress form previews.
• Any usage of cryptographic signing, unless a different key is provided.

If you rotate your secret key, all of the above will be invalidated. Secret keys are not used for passwords of users and key rotation will not affect them.

Note

The default settings.py file created by django-admin startproject creates a unique SECRET_KEY for convenience.

SECURE_BROWSER_XSS_FILTER

New in Django 1.8.

Default: False

If True, the SecurityMiddleware sets the X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block header on all responses that do not already have it.

SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF

New in Django 1.8.

Default: False

If True, the SecurityMiddleware sets the X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff header on all responses that do not already have it.

SECURE_HSTS_INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS

New in Django 1.8.

Default: False

If True, the SecurityMiddleware adds the includeSubDomains tag to the HTTP Strict Transport Security header. It has no effect unless SECURE_HSTS_SECONDS is set to a non-zero value.

Warning

Setting this incorrectly can irreversibly (for the value of SECURE_HSTS_SECONDS) break your site. Read the HTTP Strict Transport Security documentation first.

SECURE_HSTS_SECONDS

New in Django 1.8.

Default: 0

If set to a non-zero integer value, the SecurityMiddleware sets the HTTP Strict Transport Security header on all responses that do not already have it.

Warning

Setting this incorrectly can irreversibly (for some time) break your site. Read the HTTP Strict Transport Security documentation first.

SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER

Default: None

A tuple representing a HTTP header/value combination that signifies a request is secure. This controls the behavior of the request object’s is_secure() method.

This takes some explanation. By default, is_secure() is able to determine whether a request is secure by looking at whether the requested URL uses “https://”. This is important for Django’s CSRF protection, and may be used by your own code or third-party apps.

If your Django app is behind a proxy, though, the proxy may be “swallowing” the fact that a request is HTTPS, using a non-HTTPS connection between the proxy and Django. In this case, is_secure() would always return False – even for requests that were made via HTTPS by the end user.

In this situation, you’ll want to configure your proxy to set a custom HTTP header that tells Django whether the request came in via HTTPS, and you’ll want to set SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER so that Django knows what header to look for.

You’ll need to set a tuple with two elements – the name of the header to look for and the required value. For example:

SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER = ('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO', 'https')

Here, we’re telling Django that we trust the X-Forwarded-Proto header that comes from our proxy, and any time its value is 'https', then the request is guaranteed to be secure (i.e., it originally came in via HTTPS). Obviously, you should only set this setting if you control your proxy or have some other guarantee that it sets/strips this header appropriately.

Note that the header needs to be in the format as used by request.META – all caps and likely starting with HTTP_. (Remember, Django automatically adds 'HTTP_' to the start of x-header names before making the header available in request.META.)

Warning

You will probably open security holes in your site if you set this without knowing what you’re doing. And if you fail to set it when you should. Seriously.

Make sure ALL of the following are true before setting this (assuming the values from the example above):

• Your Django app is behind a proxy.
• Your proxy strips the X-Forwarded-Proto header from all incoming requests. In other words, if end users include that header in their requests, the proxy will discard it.
• Your proxy sets the X-Forwarded-Proto header and sends it to Django, but only for requests that originally come in via HTTPS.

If any of those are not true, you should keep this setting set to None and find another way of determining HTTPS, perhaps via custom middleware.

SECURE_REDIRECT_EXEMPT

New in Django 1.8.

Default: [] (Empty list)

If a URL path matches a regular expression in this list, the request will not be redirected to HTTPS. If SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT is False, this setting has no effect.

SECURE_SSL_HOST

New in Django 1.8.

Default: None

If a string (e.g. secure.example.com), all SSL redirects will be directed to this host rather than the originally-requested host (e.g. www.example.com). If SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT is False, this setting has no effect.

SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT

New in Django 1.8.

Default: False.

If True, the SecurityMiddleware redirects all non-HTTPS requests to HTTPS (except for those URLs matching a regular expression listed in SECURE_REDIRECT_EXEMPT).

Note

If turning this to True causes infinite redirects, it probably means your site is running behind a proxy and can’t tell which requests are secure and which are not. Your proxy likely sets a header to indicate secure requests; you can correct the problem by finding out what that header is and configuring the SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER setting accordingly.

SERIALIZATION_MODULES

Default: Not defined.

A dictionary of modules containing serializer definitions (provided as strings), keyed by a string identifier for that serialization type. For example, to define a YAML serializer, use:

SERIALIZATION_MODULES = {'yaml': 'path.to.yaml_serializer'}

SERVER_EMAIL

Default: 'root@localhost'

The email address that error messages come from, such as those sent to ADMINS and MANAGERS.

Why are my emails sent from a different address?

This address is used only for error messages. It is not the address that regular email messages sent with send_mail() come from; for that, see DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL.

SHORT_DATE_FORMAT

Default: m/d/Y (e.g. 12/31/2003)

An available formatting that can be used for displaying date fields on templates. Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the corresponding locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied. See allowed date format strings.

See also DATE_FORMAT and SHORT_DATETIME_FORMAT.

SHORT_DATETIME_FORMAT

Default: m/d/Y P (e.g. 12/31/2003 4 p.m.)

An available formatting that can be used for displaying datetime fields on templates. Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the corresponding locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied. See allowed date format strings.

See also DATE_FORMAT and SHORT_DATE_FORMAT.

SIGNING_BACKEND

Default: 'django.core.signing.TimestampSigner'

The backend used for signing cookies and other data.

See also the Cryptographic signing documentation.

SILENCED_SYSTEM_CHECKS

New in Django 1.7.

Default: [] (Empty list)

A list of identifiers of messages generated by the system check framework (i.e. ["models.W001"]) that you wish to permanently acknowledge and ignore. Silenced warnings will no longer be output to the console; silenced errors will still be printed, but will not prevent management commands from running.

See also the System check framework documentation.

TEMPLATES

New in Django 1.8.

Default: [] (Empty list)

A list containing the settings for all template engines to be used with Django. Each item of the list is a dictionary containing the options for an individual engine.

Here’s a simple setup that tells the Django template engine to load templates from the templates subdirectory inside each installed application:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'APP_DIRS': True,
    },
]

The following options are available for all backends.

BACKEND

Default: not defined

The template backend to use. The built-in template backends are:

• 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates'
• 'django.template.backends.jinja2.Jinja2'

You can use a template backend that doesn’t ship with Django by setting BACKEND to a fully-qualified path (i.e. 'mypackage.whatever.Backend').

NAME

Default: see below

The alias for this particular template engine. It’s an identifier that allows selecting an engine for rendering. Aliases must be unique across all configured template engines.

It defaults to the name of the module defining the engine class, i.e. the next to last piece of BACKEND, when it isn’t provided. For example if the backend is 'mypackage.whatever.Backend' then its default name is 'whatever'.

DIRS

Default: [] (Empty list)

Directories where the engine should look for template source files, in search order.

APP_DIRS

Default: False

Whether the engine should look for template source files inside installed applications.

Note

The default settings.py file created by django-admin startproject sets 'APP_DIRS': True.

OPTIONS

Default: {} (Empty dict)

Extra parameters to pass to the template backend. Available parameters vary depending on the template backend. See DjangoTemplates and Jinja2 for the options of the built-in backends.

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

Default:

("django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth",
"django.template.context_processors.debug",
"django.template.context_processors.i18n",
"django.template.context_processors.media",
"django.template.context_processors.static",
"django.template.context_processors.tz",
"django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages")

Deprecated since version 1.8: Set the 'context_processors' option in the OPTIONS of a DjangoTemplates backend instead.

A tuple of callables that are used to populate the context in RequestContext. These callables take a request object as their argument and return a dictionary of items to be merged into the context.

Changed in Django 1.8:

Built-in template context processors were moved from django.core.context_processors to django.template.context_processors in Django 1.8.

TEMPLATE_DEBUG

Default: False

Deprecated since version 1.8: Set the 'debug' option in the OPTIONS of a DjangoTemplates backend instead.

A boolean that turns on/off template debug mode. If this is True, the fancy error page will display a detailed report for any exception raised during template rendering. This report contains the relevant snippet of the template, with the appropriate line highlighted.

Note that Django only displays fancy error pages if DEBUG is True, so you’ll want to set that to take advantage of this setting.

See also DEBUG.

TEMPLATE_DIRS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

Deprecated since version 1.8: Set the DIRS option of a DjangoTemplates backend instead.

List of locations of the template source files searched by django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader, in search order.

Note that these paths should use Unix-style forward slashes, even on Windows.

See The Django template language.

TEMPLATE_LOADERS

Default:

('django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
 'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader')

Deprecated since version 1.8: Set the 'loaders' option in the OPTIONS of a DjangoTemplates backend instead.

A tuple of template loader classes, specified as strings. Each Loader class knows how to import templates from a particular source. Optionally, a tuple can be used instead of a string. The first item in the tuple should be the Loader’s module, subsequent items are passed to the Loader during initialization. See The Django template language: for Python programmers.

TEMPLATE_STRING_IF_INVALID

Default: '' (Empty string)

Deprecated since version 1.8: Set the 'string_if_invalid' option in the OPTIONS of a DjangoTemplates backend instead.

Output, as a string, that the template system should use for invalid (e.g. misspelled) variables. See How invalid variables are handled.

TEST_RUNNER

Default: 'django.test.runner.DiscoverRunner'

The name of the class to use for starting the test suite. See Using different testing frameworks.

TEST_NON_SERIALIZED_APPS

New in Django 1.7.

Default: [] (Empty list)

In order to restore the database state between tests for TransactionTestCases and database backends without transactions, Django will serialize the contents of all apps when it starts the test run so it can then reload from that copy before running tests that need it.

This slows down the startup time of the test runner; if you have apps that you know don’t need this feature, you can add their full names in here (e.g. 'django.contrib.contenttypes') to exclude them from this serialization process.

THOUSAND_SEPARATOR

Default: , (Comma)

Default thousand separator used when formatting numbers. This setting is used only when USE_THOUSAND_SEPARATOR is True and NUMBER_GROUPING is greater than 0.

Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied instead.

See also NUMBER_GROUPING, DECIMAL_SEPARATOR and USE_THOUSAND_SEPARATOR.

TIME_FORMAT

Default: 'P' (e.g. 4 p.m.)

The default formatting to use for displaying time fields in any part of the system. Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied instead. See allowed date format strings.

See also DATE_FORMAT and DATETIME_FORMAT.

TIME_INPUT_FORMATS

Default:

(
    '%H:%M:%S',     # '14:30:59'
    '%H:%M:%S.%f',  # '14:30:59.000200'
    '%H:%M',        # '14:30'
)

A tuple of formats that will be accepted when inputting data on a time field. Formats will be tried in order, using the first valid one. Note that these format strings use Python’s datetime module syntax, not the format strings from the date Django template tag.

When USE_L10N is True, the locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied instead.

See also DATE_INPUT_FORMATS and DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS.

TIME_ZONE

Default: 'America/Chicago'

A string representing the time zone for this installation, or None. See the list of time zones.

Note

Since Django was first released with the TIME_ZONE set to 'America/Chicago', the global setting (used if nothing is defined in your project’s settings.py) remains 'America/Chicago' for backwards compatibility. New project templates default to 'UTC'.

Note that this isn’t necessarily the time zone of the server. For example, one server may serve multiple Django-powered sites, each with a separate time zone setting.

When USE_TZ is False, this is the time zone in which Django will store all datetimes. When USE_TZ is True, this is the default time zone that Django will use to display datetimes in templates and to interpret datetimes entered in forms.

Django sets the os.environ['TZ'] variable to the time zone you specify in the TIME_ZONE setting. Thus, all your views and models will automatically operate in this time zone. However, Django won’t set the TZ environment variable under the following conditions:

• If you’re using the manual configuration option as described in manually configuring settings, or
• If you specify TIME_ZONE = None. This will cause Django to fall back to using the system timezone. However, this is discouraged when USE_TZ = True, because it makes conversions between local time and UTC less reliable.

If Django doesn’t set the TZ environment variable, it’s up to you to ensure your processes are running in the correct environment.

Note

Django cannot reliably use alternate time zones in a Windows environment. If you’re running Django on Windows, TIME_ZONE must be set to match the system time zone.

USE_ETAGS

Default: False

A boolean that specifies whether to output the “Etag” header. This saves bandwidth but slows down performance. This is used by the CommonMiddleware (see Middleware) and in the``Cache Framework`` (see Django’s cache framework).

USE_I18N

Default: True

A boolean that specifies whether Django’s translation system should be enabled. This provides an easy way to turn it off, for performance. If this is set to False, Django will make some optimizations so as not to load the translation machinery.

See also LANGUAGE_CODE, USE_L10N and USE_TZ.

Note

The default settings.py file created by django-admin startproject includes USE_I18N = True for convenience.

USE_L10N

Default: False

A boolean that specifies if localized formatting of data will be enabled by default or not. If this is set to True, e.g. Django will display numbers and dates using the format of the current locale.

See also LANGUAGE_CODE, USE_I18N and USE_TZ.

Note

The default settings.py file created by django-admin startproject includes USE_L10N = True for convenience.

USE_THOUSAND_SEPARATOR

Default: False

A boolean that specifies whether to display numbers using a thousand separator. When USE_L10N is set to True and if this is also set to True, Django will use the values of THOUSAND_SEPARATOR and NUMBER_GROUPING to format numbers.

See also DECIMAL_SEPARATOR, NUMBER_GROUPING and THOUSAND_SEPARATOR.

USE_TZ

Default: False

A boolean that specifies if datetimes will be timezone-aware by default or not. If this is set to True, Django will use timezone-aware datetimes internally. Otherwise, Django will use naive datetimes in local time.

See also TIME_ZONE, USE_I18N and USE_L10N.

Note

The default settings.py file created by django-admin startproject includes USE_TZ = True for convenience.

USE_X_FORWARDED_HOST

Default: False

A boolean that specifies whether to use the X-Forwarded-Host header in preference to the Host header. This should only be enabled if a proxy which sets this header is in use.

WSGI_APPLICATION

Default: None

The full Python path of the WSGI application object that Django’s built-in servers (e.g. runserver) will use. The django-admin startproject management command will create a simple wsgi.py file with an application callable in it, and point this setting to that application.

If not set, the return value of django.core.wsgi.get_wsgi_application() will be used. In this case, the behavior of runserver will be identical to previous Django versions.

YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT

Default: 'F Y'

The default formatting to use for date fields on Django admin change-list pages – and, possibly, by other parts of the system – in cases when only the year and month are displayed.

For example, when a Django admin change-list page is being filtered by a date drilldown, the header for a given month displays the month and the year. Different locales have different formats. For example, U.S. English would say “January 2006,” whereas another locale might say “2006/January.”

Note that if USE_L10N is set to True, then the corresponding locale-dictated format has higher precedence and will be applied.

See allowed date format strings. See also DATE_FORMAT, DATETIME_FORMAT, TIME_FORMAT and MONTH_DAY_FORMAT.

X_FRAME_OPTIONS

Default: 'SAMEORIGIN'

The default value for the X-Frame-Options header used by XFrameOptionsMiddleware. See the clickjacking protection documentation.

Auth

Settings for django.contrib.auth.

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS

Default: ('django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',)

A tuple of authentication backend classes (as strings) to use when attempting to authenticate a user. See the authentication backends documentation for details.

AUTH_USER_MODEL

Default: ‘auth.User’

The model to use to represent a User. See Substituting a custom User model.

Warning

You cannot change the AUTH_USER_MODEL setting during the lifetime of a project (i.e. once you have made and migrated models that depend on it) without serious effort. It is intended to be set at the project start, and the model it refers to must be available in the first migration of the app that it lives in. See Substituting a custom User model for more details.

LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL

Default: '/accounts/profile/'

The URL where requests are redirected after login when the contrib.auth.login view gets no next parameter.

This is used by the login_required() decorator, for example.

This setting also accepts named URL patterns which can be used to reduce configuration duplication since you don’t have to define the URL in two places (settings and URLconf).

Deprecated since version 1.8: The setting may also be a dotted Python path to a view function. Support for this will be removed in Django 1.10.

LOGIN_URL

Default: '/accounts/login/'

The URL where requests are redirected for login, especially when using the login_required() decorator.

This setting also accepts named URL patterns which can be used to reduce configuration duplication since you don’t have to define the URL in two places (settings and URLconf).

Deprecated since version 1.8: The setting may also be a dotted Python path to a view function. Support for this will be removed in Django 1.10.

PASSWORD_RESET_TIMEOUT_DAYS

Default: 3

The number of days a password reset link is valid for. Used by the django.contrib.auth password reset mechanism.

PASSWORD_HASHERS

See How Django stores passwords.

Default:

('django.contrib.auth.hashers.PBKDF2PasswordHasher',
 'django.contrib.auth.hashers.PBKDF2SHA1PasswordHasher',
 'django.contrib.auth.hashers.BCryptPasswordHasher',
 'django.contrib.auth.hashers.SHA1PasswordHasher',
 'django.contrib.auth.hashers.MD5PasswordHasher',
 'django.contrib.auth.hashers.UnsaltedMD5PasswordHasher',
 'django.contrib.auth.hashers.CryptPasswordHasher')

Messages

Settings for django.contrib.messages.

MESSAGE_LEVEL

Default: messages.INFO

Sets the minimum message level that will be recorded by the messages framework. See message levels for more details.

Important

If you override MESSAGE_LEVEL in your settings file and rely on any of the built-in constants, you must import the constants module directly to avoid the potential for circular imports, e.g.:

from django.contrib.messages import constants as message_constants
MESSAGE_LEVEL = message_constants.DEBUG

If desired, you may specify the numeric values for the constants directly according to the values in the above constants table.

MESSAGE_STORAGE

Default: 'django.contrib.messages.storage.fallback.FallbackStorage'

Controls where Django stores message data. Valid values are:

• 'django.contrib.messages.storage.fallback.FallbackStorage'
• 'django.contrib.messages.storage.session.SessionStorage'
• 'django.contrib.messages.storage.cookie.CookieStorage'

See message storage backends for more details.

The backends that use cookies – CookieStorage and FallbackStorage – use the value of SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN, SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE and SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY when setting their cookies.

MESSAGE_TAGS

Default:

{messages.DEBUG: 'debug',
messages.INFO: 'info',
messages.SUCCESS: 'success',
messages.WARNING: 'warning',
messages.ERROR: 'error'}

This sets the mapping of message level to message tag, which is typically rendered as a CSS class in HTML. If you specify a value, it will extend the default. This means you only have to specify those values which you need to override. See Displaying messages above for more details.

Important

If you override MESSAGE_TAGS in your settings file and rely on any of the built-in constants, you must import the constants module directly to avoid the potential for circular imports, e.g.:

from django.contrib.messages import constants as message_constants
MESSAGE_TAGS = {message_constants.INFO: ''}

If desired, you may specify the numeric values for the constants directly according to the values in the above constants table.

Sessions

Settings for django.contrib.sessions.

SESSION_CACHE_ALIAS

Default: default

If you’re using cache-based session storage, this selects the cache to use.

SESSION_COOKIE_AGE

Default: 1209600 (2 weeks, in seconds)

The age of session cookies, in seconds.

SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN

Default: None

The domain to use for session cookies. Set this to a string such as ".example.com" (note the leading dot!) for cross-domain cookies, or use None for a standard domain cookie.

Be cautious when updating this setting on a production site. If you update this setting to enable cross-domain cookies on a site that previously used standard domain cookies, existing user cookies will be set to the old domain. This may result in them being unable to log in as long as these cookies persist.

This setting also affects cookies set by django.contrib.messages.

SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY

Default: True

Whether to use HTTPOnly flag on the session cookie. If this is set to True, client-side JavaScript will not to be able to access the session cookie.

HTTPOnly is a flag included in a Set-Cookie HTTP response header. It is not part of the RFC 2109 standard for cookies, and it isn’t honored consistently by all browsers. However, when it is honored, it can be a useful way to mitigate the risk of client side script accessing the protected cookie data.

Turning it on makes it less trivial for an attacker to escalate a cross-site scripting vulnerability into full hijacking of a user’s session. There’s not much excuse for leaving this off, either: if your code depends on reading session cookies from JavaScript, you’re probably doing it wrong.

New in Django 1.7.

This setting also affects cookies set by django.contrib.messages.

SESSION_COOKIE_NAME

Default: 'sessionid'

The name of the cookie to use for sessions. This can be whatever you want (as long as it’s different from the other cookie names in your application).

SESSION_COOKIE_PATH

Default: '/'

The path set on the session cookie. This should either match the URL path of your Django installation or be parent of that path.

This is useful if you have multiple Django instances running under the same hostname. They can use different cookie paths, and each instance will only see its own session cookie.

SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE

Default: False

Whether to use a secure cookie for the session cookie. If this is set to True, the cookie will be marked as “secure,” which means browsers may ensure that the cookie is only sent under an HTTPS connection.

Since it’s trivial for a packet sniffer (e.g. Firesheep) to hijack a user’s session if the session cookie is sent unencrypted, there’s really no good excuse to leave this off. It will prevent you from using sessions on insecure requests and that’s a good thing.

New in Django 1.7.

This setting also affects cookies set by django.contrib.messages.

SESSION_ENGINE

Default: django.contrib.sessions.backends.db

Controls where Django stores session data. Included engines are:

• 'django.contrib.sessions.backends.db'
• 'django.contrib.sessions.backends.file'
• 'django.contrib.sessions.backends.cache'
• 'django.contrib.sessions.backends.cached_db'
• 'django.contrib.sessions.backends.signed_cookies'

See Configuring the session engine for more details.

SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE

Default: False

Whether to expire the session when the user closes their browser. See Browser-length sessions vs. persistent sessions.

SESSION_FILE_PATH

Default: None

If you’re using file-based session storage, this sets the directory in which Django will store session data. When the default value (None) is used, Django will use the standard temporary directory for the system.

SESSION_SAVE_EVERY_REQUEST

Default: False

Whether to save the session data on every request. If this is False (default), then the session data will only be saved if it has been modified – that is, if any of its dictionary values have been assigned or deleted. Empty sessions won’t be created, even if this setting is active.

SESSION_SERIALIZER

Default: 'django.contrib.sessions.serializers.JSONSerializer'

Full import path of a serializer class to use for serializing session data. Included serializers are:

• 'django.contrib.sessions.serializers.PickleSerializer'
• 'django.contrib.sessions.serializers.JSONSerializer'

See Session serialization for details, including a warning regarding possible remote code execution when using PickleSerializer.

Sites

Settings for django.contrib.sites.

SITE_ID

Default: Not defined

The ID, as an integer, of the current site in the django_site database table. This is used so that application data can hook into specific sites and a single database can manage content for multiple sites.

Static Files

Settings for django.contrib.staticfiles.

STATIC_ROOT

Default: None

The absolute path to the directory where collectstatic will collect static files for deployment.

Example: "/var/www/example.com/static/"

If the staticfiles contrib app is enabled (default) the collectstatic management command will collect static files into this directory. See the howto on managing static files for more details about usage.

Warning

This should be an initially empty destination directory for collecting your static files from their permanent locations into one directory for ease of deployment; it is not a place to store your static files permanently. You should do that in directories that will be found by staticfiles’s finders, which by default, are 'static/' app sub-directories and any directories you include in STATICFILES_DIRS).

STATIC_URL

Default: None

URL to use when referring to static files located in STATIC_ROOT.

Example: "/static/" or "http://static.example.com/"

If not None, this will be used as the base path for asset definitions (the Media class) and the staticfiles app.

It must end in a slash if set to a non-empty value.

You may need to configure these files to be served in development and will definitely need to do so in production.

STATICFILES_DIRS

Default: []

This setting defines the additional locations the staticfiles app will traverse if the FileSystemFinder finder is enabled, e.g. if you use the collectstatic or findstatic management command or use the static file serving view.

This should be set to a list or tuple of strings that contain full paths to your additional files directory(ies) e.g.:

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    "/home/special.polls.com/polls/static",
    "/home/polls.com/polls/static",
    "/opt/webfiles/common",
)

Note that these paths should use Unix-style forward slashes, even on Windows (e.g. "C:/Users/user/mysite/extra_static_content").

Prefixes (optional)

In case you want to refer to files in one of the locations with an additional namespace, you can optionally provide a prefix as (prefix, path) tuples, e.g.:

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    # ...
    ("downloads", "/opt/webfiles/stats"),
)

For example, assuming you have STATIC_URL set to '/static/', the collectstatic management command would collect the “stats” files in a 'downloads' subdirectory of STATIC_ROOT.

This would allow you to refer to the local file '/opt/webfiles/stats/polls_20101022.tar.gz' with '/static/downloads/polls_20101022.tar.gz' in your templates, e.g.:

<a href="{% static "downloads/polls_20101022.tar.gz" %}">

STATICFILES_STORAGE

Default: 'django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.StaticFilesStorage'

The file storage engine to use when collecting static files with the collectstatic management command.

A ready-to-use instance of the storage backend defined in this setting can be found at django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.staticfiles_storage.

For an example, see Serving static files from a cloud service or CDN.

STATICFILES_FINDERS

Default:

("django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder",
 "django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder")

The list of finder backends that know how to find static files in various locations.

The default will find files stored in the STATICFILES_DIRS setting (using django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder) and in a static subdirectory of each app (using django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder). If multiple files with the same name are present, the first file that is found will be used.

One finder is disabled by default: django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.DefaultStorageFinder. If added to your STATICFILES_FINDERS setting, it will look for static files in the default file storage as defined by the DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE setting.

Note

When using the AppDirectoriesFinder finder, make sure your apps can be found by staticfiles. Simply add the app to the INSTALLED_APPS setting of your site.

Static file finders are currently considered a private interface, and this interface is thus undocumented.

Core Settings Topical Index

Cache

• CACHES
• CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_ALIAS
• CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_KEY_PREFIX
• CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_SECONDS

Database

• DATABASES
• DATABASE_ROUTERS
• DEFAULT_INDEX_TABLESPACE
• DEFAULT_TABLESPACE

Debugging

• DEBUG
• DEBUG_PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS

Email

• ADMINS
• DEFAULT_CHARSET
• DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL
• EMAIL_BACKEND
• EMAIL_FILE_PATH
• EMAIL_HOST
• EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD
• EMAIL_HOST_USER
• EMAIL_PORT
• EMAIL_SSL_CERTFILE
• EMAIL_SSL_KEYFILE
• EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX
• EMAIL_TIMEOUT
• EMAIL_USE_TLS
• MANAGERS
• SERVER_EMAIL

Error reporting

• DEFAULT_EXCEPTION_REPORTER_FILTER
• IGNORABLE_404_URLS
• MANAGERS
• SILENCED_SYSTEM_CHECKS

File uploads

• DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE
• FILE_CHARSET
• FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS
• FILE_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE
• FILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS
• FILE_UPLOAD_TEMP_DIR
• MEDIA_ROOT
• MEDIA_URL

Globalization (i18n/l10n)

• DATE_FORMAT
• DATE_INPUT_FORMATS
• DATETIME_FORMAT
• DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS
• DECIMAL_SEPARATOR
• FIRST_DAY_OF_WEEK
• FORMAT_MODULE_PATH
• LANGUAGE_CODE
• LANGUAGE_COOKIE_AGE
• LANGUAGE_COOKIE_DOMAIN
• LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME
• LANGUAGE_COOKIE_PATH
• LANGUAGES
• LOCALE_PATHS
• MONTH_DAY_FORMAT
• NUMBER_GROUPING
• SHORT_DATE_FORMAT
• SHORT_DATETIME_FORMAT
• THOUSAND_SEPARATOR
• TIME_FORMAT
• TIME_INPUT_FORMATS
• TIME_ZONE
• USE_I18N
• USE_L10N
• USE_THOUSAND_SEPARATOR
• USE_TZ
• YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT

HTTP

• DEFAULT_CHARSET
• DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE
• DISALLOWED_USER_AGENTS
• FORCE_SCRIPT_NAME
• INTERNAL_IPS
• MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES
• Security
  • SECURE_BROWSER_XSS_FILTER
  • SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF
  • SECURE_HSTS_INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS
  • SECURE_HSTS_SECONDS
  • SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER
  • SECURE_REDIRECT_EXEMPT
  • SECURE_SSL_HOST
  • SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT
• SIGNING_BACKEND
• USE_ETAGS
• USE_X_FORWARDED_HOST
• WSGI_APPLICATION

Logging

• LOGGING
• LOGGING_CONFIG

Models

• ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES
• FIXTURE_DIRS
• INSTALLED_APPS

Security

• Cross Site Request Forgery Protection
  • CSRF_COOKIE_DOMAIN
  • CSRF_COOKIE_NAME
  • CSRF_COOKIE_PATH
  • CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE
  • CSRF_FAILURE_VIEW
• SECRET_KEY
• X_FRAME_OPTIONS

Serialization

• DEFAULT_CHARSET
• SERIALIZATION_MODULES

Templates

• ALLOWED_INCLUDE_ROOTS
• TEMPLATES
• TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS
• TEMPLATE_DEBUG
• TEMPLATE_DIRS
• TEMPLATE_LOADERS
• TEMPLATE_STRING_IF_INVALID

Testing

• Database: TEST
• TEST_NON_SERIALIZED_APPS
• TEST_RUNNER

URLs

• APPEND_SLASH
• PREPEND_WWW
• ROOT_URLCONF