How can I tell whether my Django application is running on development server or not?

Question

How can I be certain that my application is running on development server or not? I suppose I could check value of settings.DEBUG and assume if DEBUG is True then it's running on development server, but I'd prefer to know for sure than relying on convention.

Solution 1

server = request.META.get('wsgi.file_wrapper', None)
if server is not None and server.__module__ == 'django.core.servers.basehttp':
    print('inside dev')

Of course, wsgi.file_wrapper might be set on META, and have a class from a module named django.core.servers.basehttp by extreme coincidence on another server environment, but I hope this will have you covered.

By the way, I discovered this by making a syntatically invalid template while running on the development server, and searched for interesting stuff on the Traceback and the Request information sections, so I'm just editing my answer to corroborate with Nate's ideas.

Solution 2

I put the following in my settings.py to distinguish between the standard dev server and production:

import sys
RUNNING_DEVSERVER = (len(sys.argv) > 1 and sys.argv[1] == 'runserver')

This also relies on convention, however.

(Amended per Daniel Magnusson's comment)

Solution 3

Usually this works:

import sys

if 'runserver' in sys.argv:
    # you use runserver

Solution 4

Typically I set a variable called environment and set it to "DEVELOPMENT", "STAGING" or "PRODUCTION". Within the settings file I can then add basic logic to change which settings are being used, based on environment.

EDIT: Additionally, you can simply use this logic to include different settings.py files that override the base settings. For example:

if environment == "DEBUG":
    from debugsettings import *

Solution 5

Relying on settings.DEBUG is the most elegant way AFAICS as it is also used in Django code base on occasion.

I suppose what you really want is a way to set that flag automatically without needing you update it manually everytime you upload the project to production servers.

For that I check the path of settings.py (in settings.py) to determine what server the project is running on:

if __file__ == "path to settings.py in my development machine":
    DEBUG = True
elif __file__ in [paths of production servers]:
    DEBUG = False
else:
    raise WhereTheHellIsThisServedException()

Mind you, you might also prefer doing this check with environment variables as @Soviut suggests. But as someone developing on Windows and serving on Linux checking the file paths was plain easier than going with environment variables.

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