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Umesh Chaudhary
Umesh Chaudhary

Posted on • Originally published at uchaudhary.com.np

Unlock django super powers with Django Extensions

#django

Django Extensions provides various features collection of custom extensions for the Django Framework. These include shell_plus, management commands, additional database fields, admin extensions e.t.c.

Installation

As of now django-extension is of version 3.2.1. Install it with command:

pip3 install django-extensions
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Configuration

Add the django_extensions package to the INSTALLED_APPS section of the settings.py file.:

INSTALLED_APPS = ( ... 'django_extensions', )
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This will make sure django-extensions is loaded when the app is started.

Features

Now let's look the features in detail.
This extension consist of various management/shell commands.

1. Shell Plus

It is a enhanced version of django shell. It autoloads all the models to the shell.
The following command can be used to fireup the shell_plus.

./manage.py shell_plus
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We can configure Shell plus to use to use either ipython, bpython, ptpython or plain shell.
In the settings.py add the following below:

# Always use IPython for shell_plus SHELL_PLUS = "ipython"
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Example Screenshot:

Screenshot

Read more about the shell_plus from here.

2. Delete Squashed Migrations

Squashed migrations is a way to merge multiple migrations to single one.
The below command squashes migrations of blog app from 0001 through 0008.

./manage.py squashmigrations blog 0001 0008
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This will generate a new squashed migration. Here is how the file structure looks right now.

├── 0001_initial.py ├── 0001_initial_squashed_0008_blogcomment_parent.py ├── 0002_blog_markdown_body.py ├── 0003_alter_blog_markdown_body.py ├── 0004_blog_views.py ├── 0005_blog_table_of_content.py ├── 0006_remove_blog_body_remove_blog_table_of_content.py ├── 0007_bloglikes_blogcomment.py ├── 0008_blogcomment_parent.py
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Then the following command clean ups the migrations that are no needed.

# Delete leftover migrations from the first squashed migration found in blog ./manage.py delete_squashed_migrations blog
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After this the file structure will only contain the squashed file deleting other migrations.

0001_initial_squashed_0008_blogcomment_parent.py
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3. Export emails

The following command exports the registered user emails to a file.

./manage.py export_emails > emails.txt
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The emails.txt File will consists of something similar as below.

"admin" <admin@gmail.com>; "anonymous@gmail.com" <anonymous@gmail.com>; "anotherone@gmail.com" <anotherone@gmail.com>; "commenter@gmail.com" <commenter@gmail.com>; "comment@gmail.com" <comment@gmail.com>; "commenting@gmail.com" <commenting@gmail.com>; "email@gmail.com" <email@gmail.com>; "gamerboy@gmail.com" <gamerboy@gmail.com>; "gumail@gmail.com" <gumail@gmail.com>; "mycomment@gmail.com" <mycomment@gmail.com>; "myemail@gmail.com" <myemail@gmail.com>; "python@gmail.com" <python@gmail.com>; "realadmin@gmail.com" <realadmin@gmail.com>; "reply@gmail.com" <reply@gmail.com>; "replying@gmail.com" <replying@gmail.com>; "sdfsdfsd@gmail.com" <sdfsdfsd@gmail.com>; "sdsf@gmail.com" <sdsf@gmail.com>; "someemail@gmail.com" <someemail@gmail.com>; "test@gmail.com" <test@gmail.com>; "testing@gmail.com" <testing@gmail.com>; "testingmarkdown@gmail.com" <testingmarkdown@gmail.com>; "tryingfocus@gmail.com" <tryingfocus@gmail.com>; "Umesh" <umesschaudhary@gmail.com>;
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4. Generate Password

The following command will generate a random password for provided length.

./manage.py generate_password --length=8
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This uses Django core’s default password generator

5. Graph models

With django-extensions installed we can create an image of the database schema and relations by using the graph_models command:

./manage.py graph_models -a -o models.png
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It requires either pygraphviz or pydotplus package to generate the graphs.

pip3 install pygraphviz
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Also, the following packages is required to be installed on ur system.

apt-get -y install graphviz graphviz-dev #on debian system
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It will generate a png file that looks like this.
Model image
Read more about it from here.

6. Reset db

The following command will run DROP DATABASE and CREATE DATABASE thus resetting the database.

./manage.py reset_db --noinput
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7. Admin generator

The following command will generate the admin code on console. Then they can be used on the admin.py file.

python manage.py admin_generator blog
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That's a wrap

Furthermore there is more that django-extensions provides. Here is the official documentation that you can go through.

Happy Learning!

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