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by Scarblac 2695 days ago
In defence of Django, the way settings.py works has been very stable for the entire lifetime of Django.

It may have its problems (I don't have many issues with it) but it doesn't seem to have this problem of attracting ever more layers of abstraction on top of it. It works.
1 comments
sametmax 2695 days ago
Actually, I think settings.py is not a bad idea, but it's half backed.

There should have a schema checking the setting file. There should have a better way to extend settings, and make different settings according to context, such as prod, staging or dev.

There should be a linter avoiding stupid mistakes like missing a coma in a tuple, resulting in string concatenation.

There should be variables giving you basic stuff like current dir, log dir, var dir, etc. We all make them anyway.

And there should be a better to debug the import settings problem.

But all in all, it's quick and easy to edit, and very powerful.

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devxpy 2695 days ago
There is already a mechanism to validate the settings.py file inside django.

The different context stuff can be handled by using env vars, and a nice python wrapper, like python-decouple.

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sametmax 2695 days ago
> There is already a mechanism to validate the settings.py file inside django.

It's not exposed, but it's very limited.

> The different context stuff can be handled by using env vars, and a nice python wrapper, like python-decouple.

It's just one of the way to do it. Go to a new project, they use a different way. The main benefit of Django is the fact that a Django project is well integrated, and you find similar conventions and structure from project to project, allowing to reuse the skill you learned and build an ecosystem of pluggable app.

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devxpy 2695 days ago
Just so we're on the same page, this is the validation I was referring to -

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.1/topics/checks/

Standardization is always an issue, I guess. Env vars seem to be the norm in the community in my experience, whatever that's worth..

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sametmax 2694 days ago
Ah the stuff used for the password ?

I would be more of a fan of something like marshmallow, checking the whole thing.

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