Hello, I recently "finished" my first really working version of GDAPS, my Generic Django Application Plugin System. It's noway perfect, but does what it should: providing pluggable apps for an app framework, including a more or less flexible frontend with each django app.
I had much struggle with it, and one of the lessons I learned was
Django's setup system, and how it deals with loading apps. Unfortunately
Django can't load/unload apps on the fly, so it is necessary to restart
Django whenever a new GDAPS app is installed via pip.
But: I want to resurrect an old theme again which would, in a way,
improve some of the loading problems I encountered. Django's settings
are code. Which is, in fact, a very good thing, as it makes it extremely
flexible and adaptable to different setups. But, as discussed with the
SECRET_KEY here, some of the settings _have_ to be coded very
complicated, and it makes some things like per-app-settings extremely
uncomfortable.
What if - and please don't kill me instantly - yes, I am a newcomer, and
not a good programmer maybe - but some things are viewed better from
"outside" - what if Django settings could be "declarative"?
So instead of Python code like
INSTALLED_APPS = [
'django.contrib.admin',
'django.contrib.auth',
'django.contrib.contenttypes'
]
This would be in an e.g. JSON file
{
"INSTALLED_APPS": [
"django.contrib.admin",
"django.contrib.auth",
"django.contrib.contenttypes"
] ,
ROOT_URLCONF: "fooproject.urls"
}
Django's settings.py would look different: It would load that
settings.json file and set the appropriate values into local code - so
this wouldn't make much difference.
Except 2 things:
1. Apps could have (default) settings, and they could be merged MUCH
easier. Things like namespaced classes that are overwriting values like
DRF/graphene does, would be completely unnecessary. The main
settings.json file could be the "last word" in the process of settings,
so anything an app would suggest could be overrided in the main file.
2. Installed apps could be managed much more comfortable. Adding an app
could be done by a script (JSON editing is easy. Editing code
(=settings.py) is error prone and uncomfortable). I have a Django
command script ATM for that, but just because I add a line into
settings.py to add some additional apps to the list.
This even could be done with backwards compatibility, because Django
would keep it's settings.py file optionally:
* read json settings (if they exist), use them
* load settings.py which allows to override them again (using some
special code tricks like dynamic loading, environments etc.)
Please tell me what you think about that.
Christian
--
Dr. Christian González
https://nerdocs.at
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Description: application/pgp-keys
