DJ-Database-URL

This simple Django utility allows you to utilize the 12factor inspired DATABASE_URL environment variable to configure your Django application.

The dj_database_url.config method returns a Django database connection dictionary, populated with all the data specified in your URL. There is also a conn_max_age argument to easily enable Django's connection pool.

If you'd rather not use an environment variable, you can pass a URL in directly instead to dj_database_url.parse.

Supported Databases

Support currently exists for PostgreSQL, PostGIS, MySQL, MySQL (GIS), Oracle, Oracle (GIS), Redshift, CockroachDB, Timescale, Timescale (GIS) and SQLite.

Installation

Installation is simple:

$ pip install dj-database-url

Usage

1. If DATABASES is already defined:

• Configure your database in settings.py from DATABASE_URL:

  import dj_database_url
  
  DATABASES['default'] = dj_database_url.config(
      conn_max_age=600,
      conn_health_checks=True,
  )

• Provide a default:

  DATABASES['default'] = dj_database_url.config(
      default='postgres://...',
      conn_max_age=600,
      conn_health_checks=True,
  )

• Parse an arbitrary Database URL:

  DATABASES['default'] = dj_database_url.parse(
      'postgres://...',
      conn_max_age=600,
      conn_health_checks=True,
  )

2. If DATABASES is not defined:

• Configure your database in settings.py from DATABASE_URL:

  import dj_database_url
  
  DATABASES = {
      'default': dj_database_url.config(
          conn_max_age=600,
          conn_health_checks=True,
      ),
  }

• You can provide a default, used if the DATABASE_URL setting is not defined:

  DATABASES = {
      'default': dj_database_url.config(
          default='postgres://...',
          conn_max_age=600,
          conn_health_checks=True,
      )
  }

• Parse an arbitrary Database URL:

  DATABASES = {
      'default': dj_database_url.parse(
          'postgres://...',
          conn_max_age=600,
          conn_health_checks=True,
      )
  }

conn_max_age sets the CONN_MAX_AGE setting, which tells Django to persist database connections between requests, up to the given lifetime in seconds. If you do not provide a value, it will follow Django’s default of 0. Setting it is recommended for performance.

conn_health_checks sets the CONN_HEALTH_CHECKS setting (new in Django 4.1), which tells Django to check a persisted connection still works at the start of each request. If you do not provide a value, it will follow Django’s default of False. Enabling it is recommended if you set a non-zero conn_max_age.

Strings passed to dj_database_url must be valid URLs; in particular, special characters must be url-encoded. The following url will raise a ValueError:

postgres://user:p#ssword!@localhost/foobar

and should instead be passed as:

postgres://user:p%23ssword!@localhost/foobar

TEST settings can be configured using the test_options attribute:

DATABASES['default'] = dj_database_url.config(default='postgres://...', test_options={'NAME': 'mytestdatabase'})

URL schema

Contributing

We welcome contributions to this project. Projects can take two forms:

1. Raising issues or helping others through the github issue tracker.
2. Contributing code.

Raising Issues or helping others:

When submitting an issue or helping other remember you are talking to humans who have feelings, jobs and lives of their own. Be nice, be kind, be polite. Remember english may not be someone first language, if you do not understand or something is not clear be polite and re-ask/ re-word.

Contributing code:

• Before writing code be sure to check existing PR's and issues in the tracker.
• Write code to the pylint spec.
• Large or wide sweeping changes will take longer, and may face more scrutiny than smaller confined changes.
• Code should be pass black and flake8 validation.