django-safesettings

I created django-safesettings to solve Django's problem with separating unique settings from development and production environments.

Settings variables

{{ AUTHOR_NAME }} = Your name
{{ AUTHOR_EMAIL }} = Your email address
{{ PROJECT_NAME }} = The name of your Django project (the folder containing settings.py)

Files

common_settings.py

This file holds the settings that are consistent between your development and production environments. Think of it as containing shared settings.

dev_settings.py

This file holds the unique settings for your development environment.

prod_settings.py

This file holds the unique settings for your production environment.

local_settings.py

This file holds the sensitive settings for each environment, like database credentials, API keys, and your Django secret key. You will have one local_settings.py file for each environment, stored outside of your repository. See below for "Copying local_settings.py." This file does NOT get checked into version control!

Getting started

1. Git clone and navigate inside the repository

git clone https://github.com/peterfschaadt/django-safesettings
cd django-safesettings

2. Copy the settings directory and its contents from this repository to the location of your app's settings.py

cp settings /home/django/web/{{ PROJECT_NAME }}/{{ PROJECT_NAME }}

3. Remove the settings.py file that you will no longer be using. You can also rename it (Example: old_settings.py) and remove later if you need to copy individual settings out of it.

4. Create a file called local_settings.py using example_local_settings.py as a template. Be sure to generate a new Django key or copy the one over from your previous settings.py file (only if it was never checked into version control).

Copying local_settings.py

Here are two different methods of placing your environment-specific local_settings.py file inside your settings folder. It is important that each environmeny's local_settings.py is not tracked by your version control system (django-safesettings has it included in .gitignore).

1. I recommend an SFTP tool like FileZilla or CyberDuck to securely place local_settings.py on the server. However, this is harder to automate with a script than the Fabfile command below.

2. Use a Fabric command to place the correct local_settings.py file on your server. Here's a simple command to put in your fabfile.py to copy your local_settings.

def copy_local_settings():
    """
    put('from/this/folder', 'to/this/folder')
    """
    put('/home/{{ AUTHOR_NAME }}/django/local_settings.py', 
        /home/django/{{ PROJECT_NAME }}/{{ PROJECT_NAME }}/settings/)

3. Use Secure Copy (SCP) to transfer the file over SSH.

scp local_settings.py <USER>@<HOST>:/home/django/{{ PROJECT_NAME }}/{{ PROJECT_NAME }}/settings/

Background

I created django-safesettings to use on my ChromeFiddle project. I wanted to host the site's source code publicly on GitHub but I needed to protect Django's secret key, database credentials, and my email password. With this module I was able to make the source code available on GitHub, but I could still protect the security of my site.