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, and SQLite.

Installation

Installation is simple:

$ pip install dj-database-url

Usage

Configure your database in settings.py from DATABASE_URL:

import dj_database_url

DATABASES['default'] = dj_database_url.config(conn_max_age=600)

Provide a default:

DATABASES['default'] = dj_database_url.config(default='postgres://...')

Parse an arbitrary Database URL:

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

The conn_max_age attribute is the lifetime of a database connection in seconds and is available in Django 1.6+. If you do not set a value, it will default to 0 which is Django's historical behavior of using a new database connection on each request. Use None for unlimited persistent connections.

URL schema

Engine	Django Backend	URL
PostgreSQL	django.db.backends.postgresql [1]	postgres://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/NAME [2]
PostGIS	django.contrib.gis.db.backends.postgis	postgis://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/NAME
MSSQL	sql_server.pyodbc	mssql://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/NAME
MySQL	django.db.backends.mysql	mysql://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/NAME
MySQL (GIS)	django.contrib.gis.db.backends.mysql	mysqlgis://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/NAME
SQLite	django.db.backends.sqlite3	sqlite:///PATH [3]
SpatiaLite	django.contrib.gis.db.backends.spatialite	spatialite:///PATH [3]
Oracle	django.db.backends.oracle	oracle://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/NAME [4]
Oracle (GIS)	django.contrib.gis.db.backends.oracle	oraclegis://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/NAME
Redshift	django_redshift_backend	redshift://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/NAME

[1]	The django.db.backends.postgresql backend is named django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2 in older releases. For backwards compatibility, the old name still works in newer versions. (The new name does not work in older versions).

[2]	With PostgreSQL, you can also use unix domain socket paths with percent encoding: postgres://%2Fvar%2Flib%2Fpostgresql/dbname.

[3]	(1, 2) SQLite connects to file based databases. The same URL format is used, omitting the hostname, and using the "file" portion as the filename of the database. This has the effect of four slashes being present for an absolute file path: sqlite:////full/path/to/your/database/file.sqlite.

[4]	Note that when connecting to Oracle the URL isn't in the form you may know from using other Oracle tools (like SQLPlus) i.e. user and password are separated by : not by /. Also you can omit HOST and PORT and provide a full DSN string or TNS name in NAME part.