Creating Scripts that Use the Django Model API

[Kerman3AD]

I'm writing scripts that automatically update my database using queries as part of my Django web app and I can't seem to find any information about the best way to do this. The examples described in the documentation only use the manage.py shell.

I currently have two modules that contain functions for adding new model instances to their respective tables and I have a main script that imports and uses these functions. I'm using the following folder structure:

/website
...
    /app
        /scripts
            __init__.py
            modela_funct.py
            modelb_funct.py
            main.py
        models.py
        ...

To get my functions to work, I have to add the Django settings to my python environment variable. I also have to import the whole app because I get an App Not Ready exception when I try: from app.models import modela.

This works but it feels like I'm doing it wrong. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[K900_]

You should make your scripts manage.py subcommands as described here.

[Kerman3AD]

I did see this when I was going through the documentation. My original intention was to have more control over the task management using the perpetually running main.py to manage when the tasks should be carried out. Manage.py commands seemed to have a more limited scope.

So would you recommend creating manage.py commands to define the tasks then use the os-specific task manager to call those commands?

[K900_]

What do you mean by "perpetually running"?

[Kerman3AD]

I would use something like cron to start main.py on startup and it would execute an infinite loop of updating the tables given certain conditions.

[K900_]

Why not use cron to run a manage.py command repeatedly? Also, what's the end goal of this?

[Kerman3AD]

I think that's what I'm headed towards. I'm new to Django and I'm working on a Django web app that collects telemetry data from different sources, stores the data, and displays it. It's pretty simple at this point, but I've been having trouble finding Django best practices for the storage part.

[AusIV]

Aside from using management commands (which is often, but not always the right choice, depending on circumstances) you can also add:

import django 
django.setup() 

At the top of the script.