django-autoload

django-autoload is a reuseable django app which allows for correct initialization of your django project by ensuring the loading of signal handlers or indexes before any request is being processed.

Documentation

Installation

  1. Add django-autoload/autoload to settings.INSTALLED_APPS
    INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'autoload',
)
  2. Add the autoload.middleware.AutoloadMiddleware before any other middelware
    MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = ('autoload.middleware.AutoloadMiddleware', ) + \
                      MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES

How does django-autoload ensures correct initialization of my project?

django-autoload provides two mechanisms to allow for correct initializations:

  1. The autoload.middleware.AutoloadMiddleware middleware will load all models.py from settings.INSTALLED_APPS as soon as the first request is being processed. This ensures the registration of signal handlers for example.
  2. django-autoload provides a site configuration module loading mechanism. Therefore, you have to create a site configuration module. The module name has to be specified in your settings:
# settings.py:
AUTOLOAD_SITECONF = 'indexes'

Now, django-autoload will load the module indexes.py before any request is being processed. An example module could look like this:

# indexes.py:
from dbindexer import autodiscover
autodiscover()

This will ensure the registration of all database indexes specified in your project.

autoload.autodiscover(module_name)

Some apps like django-dbindexer or nonrel-search provide an autodiscover-mechanism which tries to import index definitions from all apps in settings.INSTALLED_APPS. Since the autodiscover-mechanism is so common django-autoload provides an autodiscover function for these apps.

autodiscover will search for [module_name].py in all settings.INSTALLED_APPS and load them. django-dbindexer's autodiscover function just looks like this for example:

def autodiscover():
    from autoload import autodiscover as auto_discover
    auto_discover('dbindexes')