Getting runtime help

Run django-admin help to display usage information and a list of the commands provided by each application.

Run django-admin help --commands to display a list of all available commands.

Run django-admin help <command> to display a description of the given command and a list of its available options.

App names

Determining the version

Run django-admin version to display the current Django version.

The output follows the schema described in PEP 440:

1.4.dev17026
1.4a1
1.4

Displaying debug output

check

Uses the system check framework to inspect the entire Django project for common problems.

By default, all apps will be checked. You can check a subset of apps by providing a list of app labels as arguments:

django-admin check auth admin myapp

The system check framework performs many different types of checks that are categorized with tags. You can use these tags to restrict the checks performed to just those in a particular category. For example, to perform only models and compatibility checks, run:

django-admin check --tag models --tag compatibility

Specifies the database to run checks requiring database access:

django-admin check --database default --database other

By default, these checks will not be run.

Lists all available tags.

Activates some additional checks that are only relevant in a deployment setting.

You can use this option in your local development environment, but since your local development settings module may not have many of your production settings, you will probably want to point the check command at a different settings module, either by setting the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable, or by passing the --settings option:

django-admin check --deploy --settings=production_settings

Or you could run it directly on a production or staging deployment to verify that the correct settings are in use (omitting --settings). You could even make it part of your integration test suite.

Specifies the message level that will cause the command to exit with a non-zero status. Default is ERROR.

compilemessages

Compiles .po files created by makemessages to .mo files for use with the built-in gettext support. See /topics/i18n/index.

Specifies the locale(s) to process. If not provided, all locales are processed.

Specifies the locale(s) to exclude from processing. If not provided, no locales are excluded.

Includes fuzzy translations into compiled files.

Example usage:

django-admin compilemessages --locale=pt_BR
django-admin compilemessages --locale=pt_BR --locale=fr -f
django-admin compilemessages -l pt_BR
django-admin compilemessages -l pt_BR -l fr --use-fuzzy
django-admin compilemessages --exclude=pt_BR
django-admin compilemessages --exclude=pt_BR --exclude=fr
django-admin compilemessages -x pt_BR
django-admin compilemessages -x pt_BR -x fr

Ignores directories matching the given glob-style pattern. Use multiple times to ignore more.

Example usage:

django-admin compilemessages --ignore=cache --ignore=outdated/*/locale

createcachetable

Creates the cache tables for use with the database cache backend using the information from your settings file. See /topics/cache for more information.

Specifies the database in which the cache table(s) will be created. Defaults to default.

Prints the SQL that would be run without actually running it, so you can customize it or use the migrations framework.

dbshell

Runs the command-line client for the database engine specified in your ENGINE setting, with the connection parameters specified in your USER, PASSWORD, etc., settings.

This command assumes the programs are on your PATH so that a call to the program name (psql, mysql, sqlite3, sqlplus) will find the program in the right place. There's no way to specify the location of the program manually.

Specifies the database onto which to open a shell. Defaults to default.

Any arguments following a -- divider will be passed on to the underlying command-line client. For example, with PostgreSQL you can use the psql command's -c flag to execute a raw SQL query directly:

$ django-admin dbshell -- -c 'select current_user'
 current_user
--------------
 postgres
(1 row)

On MySQL/MariaDB, you can do this with the mysql command's -e flag:

$ django-admin dbshell -- -e "select user()"
+----------------------+
| user()               |
+----------------------+
| djangonaut@localhost |
+----------------------+

NOTE:

diffsettings

Displays differences between the current settings file and Django's default settings (or another settings file specified by --default).

Settings that don't appear in the defaults are followed by "###". For example, the default settings don't define ROOT_URLCONF, so ROOT_URLCONF is followed by "###" in the output of diffsettings.

Displays all settings, even if they have Django's default value. Such settings are prefixed by "###".

The settings module to compare the current settings against. Leave empty to compare against Django's default settings.

Specifies the output format. Available values are hash and unified. hash is the default mode that displays the output that's described above. unified displays the output similar to diff -u. Default settings are prefixed with a minus sign, followed by the changed setting prefixed with a plus sign.

dumpdata

Outputs to standard output all data in the database associated with the named application(s).

If no application name is provided, all installed applications will be dumped.

The output of dumpdata can be used as input for loaddata.

Note that dumpdata uses the default manager on the model for selecting the records to dump. If you're using a custom manager as the default manager and it filters some of the available records, not all of the objects will be dumped.

Uses Django's base manager, dumping records which might otherwise be filtered or modified by a custom manager.

Specifies the serialization format of the output. Defaults to JSON. Supported formats are listed in serialization-formats.

Specifies the number of indentation spaces to use in the output. Defaults to None which displays all data on single line.

Prevents specific applications or models (specified in the form of app_label.ModelName) from being dumped. If you specify a model name, then only that model will be excluded, rather than the entire application. You can also mix application names and model names.

If you want to exclude multiple applications, pass --exclude more than once:

django-admin dumpdata --exclude=auth --exclude=contenttypes

Specifies the database from which data will be dumped. Defaults to default.

Uses the natural_key() model method to serialize any foreign key and many-to-many relationship to objects of the type that defines the method. If you're dumping contrib.auth Permission objects or contrib.contenttypes ContentType objects, you should probably use this flag. See the natural keys documentation for more details on this and the next option.

Omits the primary key in the serialized data of this object since it can be calculated during deserialization.

Outputs only the objects specified by a comma separated list of primary keys. This is only available when dumping one model. By default, all the records of the model are output.

Specifies a file to write the serialized data to. By default, the data goes to standard output.

When this option is set and --verbosity is greater than 0 (the default), a progress bar is shown in the terminal.

Fixtures compression

The output file can be compressed with one of the bz2, gz, lzma, or xz formats by ending the filename with the corresponding extension. For example, to output the data as a compressed JSON file:

django-admin dumpdata -o mydata.json.gz

flush

Removes all data from the database and re-executes any post-synchronization handlers. The table of which migrations have been applied is not cleared.

If you would rather start from an empty database and re-run all migrations, you should drop and recreate the database and then run migrate instead.

Suppresses all user prompts.

Specifies the database to flush. Defaults to default.

inspectdb

Introspects the database tables in the database pointed-to by the NAME setting and outputs a Django model module (a models.py file) to standard output.

You may choose what tables or views to inspect by passing their names as arguments. If no arguments are provided, models are created for views only if the --include-views option is used. Models for partition tables are created on PostgreSQL if the --include-partitions option is used.

Use this if you have a legacy database with which you'd like to use Django. The script will inspect the database and create a model for each table within it.

As you might expect, the created models will have an attribute for every field in the table. Note that inspectdb has a few special cases in its field-name output:

This feature is meant as a shortcut, not as definitive model generation. After you run it, you'll want to look over the generated models yourself to make customizations. In particular, you'll need to rearrange models' order, so that models that refer to other models are ordered properly.

Django doesn't create database defaults when a default is specified on a model field. Similarly, database defaults aren't translated to model field defaults or detected in any fashion by inspectdb.

By default, inspectdb creates unmanaged models. That is, managed = False in the model's Meta class tells Django not to manage each table's creation, modification, and deletion. If you do want to allow Django to manage the table's lifecycle, you'll need to change the managed option to True (or remove it because True is its default value).

Database-specific notes

Oracle

PostgreSQL

Specifies the database to introspect. Defaults to default.

If this option is provided, models are also created for partitions.

Only support for PostgreSQL is implemented.

If this option is provided, models are also created for database views.

loaddata

Searches for and loads the contents of the named fixture into the database.

Specifies the database into which the data will be loaded. Defaults to default.

Ignores fields and models that may have been removed since the fixture was originally generated.

Specifies a single app to look for fixtures in rather than looking in all apps.

Specifies the serialization format (e.g., json or xml) for fixtures read from stdin.

Excludes loading the fixtures from the given applications and/or models (in the form of app_label or app_label.ModelName). Use the option multiple times to exclude more than one app or model.

What's a fixture ?

Django will search in three locations for fixtures:

Django will load any and all fixtures it finds in these locations that match the provided fixture names.

If the named fixture has a file extension, only fixtures of that type will be loaded. For example:

django-admin loaddata mydata.json

would only load JSON fixtures called mydata. The fixture extension must correspond to the registered name of a serializer (e.g., json or xml).

If you omit the extensions, Django will search all available fixture types for a matching fixture. For example:

django-admin loaddata mydata

would look for any fixture of any fixture type called mydata. If a fixture directory contained mydata.json, that fixture would be loaded as a JSON fixture.

The fixtures that are named can include directory components. These directories will be included in the search path. For example:

django-admin loaddata foo/bar/mydata.json

would search <app_label>/fixtures/foo/bar/mydata.json for each installed application, <dirname>/foo/bar/mydata.json for each directory in FIXTURE_DIRS, and the literal path foo/bar/mydata.json.

When fixture files are processed, the data is saved to the database as is. Model defined save() methods are not called, and any pre_save or post_save signals will be called with raw=True since the instance only contains attributes that are local to the model. You may, for example, want to disable handlers that access related fields that aren't present during fixture loading and would otherwise raise an exception:

from django.db.models.signals import post_save
from .models import MyModel
def my_handler(**kwargs):
    # disable the handler during fixture loading
    if kwargs['raw']:
        return
    ...
post_save.connect(my_handler, sender=MyModel)

You could also write a decorator to encapsulate this logic:

from functools import wraps
def disable_for_loaddata(signal_handler):
    """
    Decorator that turns off signal handlers when loading fixture data.
    """
    @wraps(signal_handler)
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        if kwargs['raw']:
            return
        signal_handler(*args, **kwargs)
    return wrapper
@disable_for_loaddata
def my_handler(**kwargs):
    ...

Just be aware that this logic will disable the signals whenever fixtures are deserialized, not just during loaddata.

Note that the order in which fixture files are processed is undefined. However, all fixture data is installed as a single transaction, so data in one fixture can reference data in another fixture. If the database backend supports row-level constraints, these constraints will be checked at the end of the transaction.

The dumpdata command can be used to generate input for loaddata.

Compressed fixtures

django-admin loaddata mydata.json

would look for any of mydata.json, mydata.json.zip, mydata.json.gz, mydata.json.bz2, mydata.json.lzma, or mydata.json.xz. The first file contained within a compressed archive is used.

Note that if two fixtures with the same name but different fixture type are discovered (for example, if mydata.json and mydata.xml.gz were found in the same fixture directory), fixture installation will be aborted, and any data installed in the call to loaddata will be removed from the database.

Support for XZ archives (.xz) and LZMA archives (.lzma) was added.

Database-specific fixtures

For example, if your DATABASES setting has a 'master' database defined, name the fixture mydata.master.json or mydata.master.json.gz and the fixture will only be loaded when you specify you want to load data into the master database.

Loading fixtures from stdin

django-admin loaddata --format=json -

When reading from stdin, the --format option is required to specify the serialization format of the input (e.g., json or xml).

Loading from stdin is useful with standard input and output redirections. For example:

django-admin dumpdata --format=json --database=test app_label.ModelName | django-admin loaddata --format=json --database=prod -

makemessages

Runs over the entire source tree of the current directory and pulls out all strings marked for translation. It creates (or updates) a message file in the conf/locale (in the Django tree) or locale (for project and application) directory. After making changes to the messages files you need to compile them with compilemessages for use with the builtin gettext support. See the i18n documentation for details.

This command doesn't require configured settings. However, when settings aren't configured, the command can't ignore the MEDIA_ROOT and STATIC_ROOT directories or include LOCALE_PATHS.

Updates the message files for all available languages.

Specifies a list of file extensions to examine (default: html, txt, py or js if --domain is js).

Example usage:

django-admin makemessages --locale=de --extension xhtml

Separate multiple extensions with commas or use -e or --extension multiple times:

django-admin makemessages --locale=de --extension=html,txt --extension xml

Specifies the locale(s) to process.

Specifies the locale(s) to exclude from processing. If not provided, no locales are excluded.

Example usage:

django-admin makemessages --locale=pt_BR
django-admin makemessages --locale=pt_BR --locale=fr
django-admin makemessages -l pt_BR
django-admin makemessages -l pt_BR -l fr
django-admin makemessages --exclude=pt_BR
django-admin makemessages --exclude=pt_BR --exclude=fr
django-admin makemessages -x pt_BR
django-admin makemessages -x pt_BR -x fr

Specifies the domain of the messages files. Supported options are:

Follows symlinks to directories when looking for new translation strings.

Example usage:

django-admin makemessages --locale=de --symlinks

Ignores files or directories matching the given glob-style pattern. Use multiple times to ignore more.

These patterns are used by default: 'CVS', '.*', '*~', '*.pyc'.

Example usage:

django-admin makemessages --locale=en_US --ignore=apps/* --ignore=secret/*.html

Disables the default values of --ignore.

Disables breaking long message lines into several lines in language files.

Suppresses writing '#: filename:line’ comment lines in language files. Using this option makes it harder for technically skilled translators to understand each message's context.

Controls #: filename:line comment lines in language files. If the option is:

Requires gettext 0.19 or newer.

Prevents deleting the temporary .pot files generated before creating the .po file. This is useful for debugging errors which may prevent the final language files from being created.

SEE ALSO:

makemigrations

Creates new migrations based on the changes detected to your models. Migrations, their relationship with apps and more are covered in depth in the migrations documentation.

Providing one or more app names as arguments will limit the migrations created to the app(s) specified and any dependencies needed (the table at the other end of a ForeignKey, for example).

To add migrations to an app that doesn't have a migrations directory, run makemigrations with the app's app_label.

Suppresses all user prompts. If a suppressed prompt cannot be resolved automatically, the command will exit with error code 3.

Outputs an empty migration for the specified apps, for manual editing. This is for advanced users and should not be used unless you are familiar with the migration format, migration operations, and the dependencies between your migrations.

Shows what migrations would be made without actually writing any migrations files to disk. Using this option along with --verbosity 3 will also show the complete migrations files that would be written.

Enables fixing of migration conflicts.

Allows naming the generated migration(s) instead of using a generated name. The name must be a valid Python identifier.

Generate migration files without Django version and timestamp header.

Makes makemigrations exit with a non-zero status when model changes without migrations are detected.

Support for calling makemigrations without an active database connection was added. In that case, check for a consistent migration history is skipped.

migrate

Synchronizes the database state with the current set of models and migrations. Migrations, their relationship with apps and more are covered in depth in the migrations documentation.

The behavior of this command changes depending on the arguments provided:

WARNING:

Specifies the database to migrate. Defaults to default.

Marks the migrations up to the target one (following the rules above) as applied, but without actually running the SQL to change your database schema.

This is intended for advanced users to manipulate the current migration state directly if they're manually applying changes; be warned that using --fake runs the risk of putting the migration state table into a state where manual recovery will be needed to make migrations run correctly.

Allows Django to skip an app's initial migration if all database tables with the names of all models created by all CreateModel operations in that migration already exist. This option is intended for use when first running migrations against a database that preexisted the use of migrations. This option does not, however, check for matching database schema beyond matching table names and so is only safe to use if you are confident that your existing schema matches what is recorded in your initial migration.

Shows the migration operations that will be performed for the given migrate command.

Allows creating tables for apps without migrations. While this isn't recommended, the migrations framework is sometimes too slow on large projects with hundreds of models.

Suppresses all user prompts. An example prompt is asking about removing stale content types.

Makes migrate exit with a non-zero status when unapplied migrations are detected.

runserver

Starts a lightweight development web server on the local machine. By default, the server runs on port 8000 on the IP address 127.0.0.1. You can pass in an IP address and port number explicitly.

If you run this script as a user with normal privileges (recommended), you might not have access to start a port on a low port number. Low port numbers are reserved for the superuser (root).

This server uses the WSGI application object specified by the WSGI_APPLICATION setting.

DO NOT USE THIS SERVER IN A PRODUCTION SETTING. It has not gone through security audits or performance tests. (And that's how it's gonna stay. We're in the business of making web frameworks, not web servers, so improving this server to be able to handle a production environment is outside the scope of Django.)

The development server automatically reloads Python code for each request, as needed. You don't need to restart the server for code changes to take effect. However, some actions like adding files don't trigger a restart, so you'll have to restart the server in these cases.

If you're using Linux or MacOS and install both pywatchman and the Watchman service, kernel signals will be used to autoreload the server (rather than polling file modification timestamps each second). This offers better performance on large projects, reduced response time after code changes, more robust change detection, and a reduction in power usage. Django supports pywatchman 1.2.0 and higher.

When you start the server, and each time you change Python code while the server is running, the system check framework will check your entire Django project for some common errors (see the check command). If any errors are found, they will be printed to standard output. You can use the --skip-checks option to skip running system checks.

You can run as many concurrent servers as you want, as long as they're on separate ports by executing django-admin runserver more than once.

Note that the default IP address, 127.0.0.1, is not accessible from other machines on your network. To make your development server viewable to other machines on the network, use its own IP address (e.g. 192.168.2.1) or 0.0.0.0 or :: (with IPv6 enabled).

You can provide an IPv6 address surrounded by brackets (e.g. [200a::1]:8000). This will automatically enable IPv6 support.

A hostname containing ASCII-only characters can also be used.

If the staticfiles contrib app is enabled (default in new projects) the runserver command will be overridden with its own runserver command.

Logging of each request and response of the server is sent to the django-server-logger logger.

Disables the auto-reloader. This means any Python code changes you make while the server is running will not take effect if the particular Python modules have already been loaded into memory.

Disables use of threading in the development server. The server is multithreaded by default.

Uses IPv6 for the development server. This changes the default IP address from 127.0.0.1 to ::1.

Support for the --skip-checks option was added.

Examples of using different ports and addresses

django-admin runserver

Port 8000 on IP address 1.2.3.4:

django-admin runserver 1.2.3.4:8000

Port 7000 on IP address 127.0.0.1:

django-admin runserver 7000

Port 7000 on IP address 1.2.3.4:

django-admin runserver 1.2.3.4:7000

Port 8000 on IPv6 address ::1:

django-admin runserver -6

Port 7000 on IPv6 address ::1:

django-admin runserver -6 7000

Port 7000 on IPv6 address 2001:0db8:1234:5678::9:

django-admin runserver [2001:0db8:1234:5678::9]:7000

Port 8000 on IPv4 address of host localhost:

django-admin runserver localhost:8000

Port 8000 on IPv6 address of host localhost:

django-admin runserver -6 localhost:8000

Serving static files with the development server

sendtestemail

Sends a test email (to confirm email sending through Django is working) to the recipient(s) specified. For example:

django-admin sendtestemail foo@example.com bar@example.com

There are a couple of options, and you may use any combination of them together:

Mails the email addresses specified in MANAGERS using mail_managers().

Mails the email addresses specified in ADMINS using mail_admins().

shell

Starts the Python interactive interpreter.

Specifies the shell to use. By default, Django will use IPython or bpython if either is installed. If both are installed, specify which one you want like so:

IPython:

django-admin shell -i ipython

bpython:

django-admin shell -i bpython

If you have a "rich" shell installed but want to force use of the "plain" Python interpreter, use python as the interface name, like so:

django-admin shell -i python

Disables reading the startup script for the "plain" Python interpreter. By default, the script pointed to by the PYTHONSTARTUP environment variable or the ~/.pythonrc.py script is read.

Lets you pass a command as a string to execute it as Django, like so:

django-admin shell --command="import django; print(django.__version__)"

You can also pass code in on standard input to execute it. For example:

$ django-admin shell <<EOF
> import django
> print(django.__version__)
> EOF

On Windows, the REPL is output due to implementation limits of select.select() on that platform.

showmigrations

Shows all migrations in a project. You can choose from one of two formats:

Lists all of the apps Django knows about, the migrations available for each app, and whether or not each migration is applied (marked by an [X] next to the migration name). For a --verbosity of 2 and above, the applied datetimes are also shown.

Apps without migrations are also listed, but have (no migrations) printed under them.

This is the default output format.

Shows the migration plan Django will follow to apply migrations. Like --list, applied migrations are marked by an [X]. For a --verbosity of 2 and above, all dependencies of a migration will also be shown.

app_labels arguments limit the output, however, dependencies of provided apps may also be included.

Specifies the database to examine. Defaults to default.

sqlflush

Prints the SQL statements that would be executed for the flush command.

Specifies the database for which to print the SQL. Defaults to default.

sqlmigrate

Prints the SQL for the named migration. This requires an active database connection, which it will use to resolve constraint names; this means you must generate the SQL against a copy of the database you wish to later apply it on.

Note that sqlmigrate doesn't colorize its output.

Generates the SQL for unapplying the migration. By default, the SQL created is for running the migration in the forwards direction.

Specifies the database for which to generate the SQL. Defaults to default.

sqlsequencereset

Prints the SQL statements for resetting sequences for the given app name(s).

Sequences are indexes used by some database engines to track the next available number for automatically incremented fields.

Use this command to generate SQL which will fix cases where a sequence is out of sync with its automatically incremented field data.

Specifies the database for which to print the SQL. Defaults to default.

squashmigrations

Squashes the migrations for app_label up to and including migration_name down into fewer migrations, if possible. The resulting squashed migrations can live alongside the unsquashed ones safely. For more information, please read migration-squashing.

When start_migration_name is given, Django will only include migrations starting from and including this migration. This helps to mitigate the squashing limitation of RunPython and django.db.migrations.operations.RunSQL migration operations.

Disables the optimizer when generating a squashed migration. By default, Django will try to optimize the operations in your migrations to reduce the size of the resulting file. Use this option if this process is failing or creating incorrect migrations, though please also file a Django bug report about the behavior, as optimization is meant to be safe.

Suppresses all user prompts.

Sets the name of the squashed migration. When omitted, the name is based on the first and last migration, with _squashed_ in between.

Generate squashed migration file without Django version and timestamp header.

startapp

Creates a Django app directory structure for the given app name in the current directory or the given destination.

By default, the new directory contains a models.py file and other app template files. If only the app name is given, the app directory will be created in the current working directory.

If the optional destination is provided, Django will use that existing directory rather than creating a new one. You can use '.' to denote the current working directory.

For example:

django-admin startapp myapp /Users/jezdez/Code/myapp

Provides the path to a directory with a custom app template file, or a path to an uncompressed archive (.tar) or a compressed archive (.tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz, .tar.lzma, .tgz, .tbz2, .txz, .tlz, .zip) containing the app template files.

For example, this would look for an app template in the given directory when creating the myapp app:

django-admin startapp --template=/Users/jezdez/Code/my_app_template myapp

Django will also accept URLs (http, https, ftp) to compressed archives with the app template files, downloading and extracting them on the fly.

For example, taking advantage of GitHub's feature to expose repositories as zip files, you can use a URL like:

django-admin startapp --template=https://github.com/githubuser/django-app-template/archive/master.zip myapp

Specifies which file extensions in the app template should be rendered with the template engine. Defaults to py.

Specifies which files in the app template (in addition to those matching --extension) should be rendered with the template engine. Defaults to an empty list.

Specifies which directories in the app template should be excluded, in addition to .git and __pycache__. If this option is not provided, directories named __pycache__ or starting with . will be excluded.

The template context used for all matching files is:

WARNING:

startproject

Creates a Django project directory structure for the given project name in the current directory or the given destination.

By default, the new directory contains manage.py and a project package (containing a settings.py and other files).

If only the project name is given, both the project directory and project package will be named <projectname> and the project directory will be created in the current working directory.

If the optional destination is provided, Django will use that existing directory as the project directory, and create manage.py and the project package within it. Use '.' to denote the current working directory.

For example:

django-admin startproject myproject /Users/jezdez/Code/myproject_repo

Specifies a directory, file path, or URL of a custom project template. See the startapp --template documentation for examples and usage.

Specifies which file extensions in the project template should be rendered with the template engine. Defaults to py.

Specifies which files in the project template (in addition to those matching --extension) should be rendered with the template engine. Defaults to an empty list.

Specifies which directories in the project template should be excluded, in addition to .git and __pycache__. If this option is not provided, directories named __pycache__ or starting with . will be excluded.

The template context used is:

Please also see the rendering warning as mentioned for startapp.

test

Runs tests for all installed apps. See /topics/testing/index for more information.

Stops running tests and reports the failure immediately after a test fails.

Controls the test runner class that is used to execute tests. This value overrides the value provided by the TEST_RUNNER setting.

Suppresses all user prompts. A typical prompt is a warning about deleting an existing test database.

Test runner options

Preserves the test database between test runs. This has the advantage of skipping both the create and destroy actions which can greatly decrease the time to run tests, especially those in a large test suite. If the test database does not exist, it will be created on the first run and then preserved for each subsequent run. Unless the MIGRATE test setting is False, any unapplied migrations will also be applied to the test database before running the test suite.

Randomizes the order of tests before running them. This can help detect tests that aren't properly isolated. The test order generated by this option is a deterministic function of the integer seed given. When no seed is passed, a seed is chosen randomly and printed to the console. To repeat a particular test order, pass a seed. The test orders generated by this option preserve Django's guarantees on test order. They also keep tests grouped by test case class.

The shuffled orderings also have a special consistency property useful when narrowing down isolation issues. Namely, for a given seed and when running a subset of tests, the new order will be the original shuffling restricted to the smaller set. Similarly, when adding tests while keeping the seed the same, the order of the original tests will be the same in the new order.

Sorts test cases in the opposite execution order. This may help in debugging the side effects of tests that aren't properly isolated. Grouping by test class is preserved when using this option. This can be used in conjunction with --shuffle to reverse the order for a particular seed.

Sets the DEBUG setting to True prior to running tests. This may help troubleshoot test failures.

Enables SQL logging for failing tests. If --verbosity is 2, then queries in passing tests are also output.

Runs tests in separate parallel processes. Since modern processors have multiple cores, this allows running tests significantly faster.

Using --parallel without a value, or with the value auto, runs one test process per core according to multiprocessing.cpu_count(). You can override this by passing the desired number of processes, e.g. --parallel 4, or by setting the DJANGO_TEST_PROCESSES environment variable.

Django distributes test cases — unittest.TestCase subclasses — to subprocesses. If there are fewer test cases than configured processes, Django will reduce the number of processes accordingly.

Each process gets its own database. You must ensure that different test cases don't access the same resources. For instance, test cases that touch the filesystem should create a temporary directory for their own use.

NOTE:

This option requires the third-party tblib package to display tracebacks correctly:

$ python -m pip install tblib

This feature isn't available on Windows. It doesn't work with the Oracle database backend either.

If you want to use pdb while debugging tests, you must disable parallel execution (--parallel=1). You'll see something like bdb.BdbQuit if you don't.

WARNING:

Support for the value auto was added.

Runs only tests marked with the specified tags. May be specified multiple times and combined with test --exclude-tag.

Tests that fail to load are always considered matching.

In older versions, tests that failed to load did not match tags.

Excludes tests marked with the specified tags. May be specified multiple times and combined with test --tag.

Runs test methods and classes matching test name patterns, in the same way as unittest's -k option. Can be specified multiple times.

Spawns a pdb debugger at each test error or failure. If you have it installed, ipdb is used instead.

Discards output (stdout and stderr) for passing tests, in the same way as unittest's --buffer option.

Django automatically calls faulthandler.enable() when starting the tests, which allows it to print a traceback if the interpreter crashes. Pass --no-faulthandler to disable this behavior.

Outputs timings, including database setup and total run time.

testserver

Runs a Django development server (as in runserver) using data from the given fixture(s).

For example, this command:

django-admin testserver mydata.json

...would perform the following steps:

This is useful in a number of ways:

Note that this server does not automatically detect changes to your Python source code (as runserver does). It does, however, detect changes to templates.

Specifies a different port, or IP address and port, from the default of 127.0.0.1:8000. This value follows exactly the same format and serves exactly the same function as the argument to the runserver command.

Examples:

To run the test server on port 7000 with fixture1 and fixture2:

django-admin testserver --addrport 7000 fixture1 fixture2
django-admin testserver fixture1 fixture2 --addrport 7000

(The above statements are equivalent. We include both of them to demonstrate that it doesn't matter whether the options come before or after the fixture arguments.)

To run on 1.2.3.4:7000 with a test fixture:

django-admin testserver --addrport 1.2.3.4:7000 test

Suppresses all user prompts. A typical prompt is a warning about deleting an existing test database.

django.contrib.auth

changepassword

This command is only available if Django's authentication system (django.contrib.auth) is installed.

Allows changing a user's password. It prompts you to enter a new password twice for the given user. If the entries are identical, this immediately becomes the new password. If you do not supply a user, the command will attempt to change the password whose username matches the current user.

Specifies the database to query for the user. Defaults to default.

Example usage:

django-admin changepassword ringo

createsuperuser

This command is only available if Django's authentication system (django.contrib.auth) is installed.

Creates a superuser account (a user who has all permissions). This is useful if you need to create an initial superuser account or if you need to programmatically generate superuser accounts for your site(s).

When run interactively, this command will prompt for a password for the new superuser account. When run non-interactively, you can provide a password by setting the DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD environment variable. Otherwise, no password will be set, and the superuser account will not be able to log in until a password has been manually set for it.

In non-interactive mode, the USERNAME_FIELD and required fields (listed in REQUIRED_FIELDS) fall back to DJANGO_SUPERUSER_<uppercase_field_name> environment variables, unless they are overridden by a command line argument. For example, to provide an email field, you can use DJANGO_SUPERUSER_EMAIL environment variable.

Suppresses all user prompts. If a suppressed prompt cannot be resolved automatically, the command will exit with error code 1.

The username and email address for the new account can be supplied by using the --username and --email arguments on the command line. If either of those is not supplied, createsuperuser will prompt for it when running interactively.

Specifies the database into which the superuser object will be saved.

You can subclass the management command and override get_input_data() if you want to customize data input and validation. Consult the source code for details on the existing implementation and the method's parameters. For example, it could be useful if you have a ForeignKey in REQUIRED_FIELDS and want to allow creating an instance instead of entering the primary key of an existing instance.

django.contrib.contenttypes

remove_stale_contenttypes

This command is only available if Django's contenttypes app (django.contrib.contenttypes) is installed.

Deletes stale content types (from deleted models) in your database. Any objects that depend on the deleted content types will also be deleted. A list of deleted objects will be displayed before you confirm it's okay to proceed with the deletion.

Specifies the database to use. Defaults to default.

Deletes stale content types including ones from previously installed apps that have been removed from INSTALLED_APPS. Defaults to False.

django.contrib.gis

ogrinspect

Please refer to its description in the GeoDjango documentation.

django.contrib.sessions

clearsessions

Can be run as a cron job or directly to clean out expired sessions.

django.contrib.sitemaps

ping_google

Please refer to its description in the Sitemaps documentation.

django.contrib.staticfiles

collectstatic

Please refer to its description in the staticfiles documentation.

findstatic

Please refer to its description in the staticfiles documentation.

Syntax coloring

The django-admin / manage.py commands will use pretty color-coded output if your terminal supports ANSI-colored output. It won't use the color codes if you're piping the command's output to another program unless the --force-color option is used.

Windows support

Under Windows, the legacy cmd.exe native console doesn't support ANSI escape sequences so by default there is no color output. In this case either of two third-party libraries are needed:

...\> py -m pip install colorama

Other modern terminal environments on Windows, that support terminal colors, but which are not automatically detected as supported by Django, may "fake" the installation of ANSICON by setting the appropriate environmental variable, ANSICON="on".

Updated support for syntax coloring on Windows.

Custom colors

You select a palette by setting a DJANGO_COLORS environment variable to specify the palette you want to use. For example, to specify the light palette under a Unix or OS/X BASH shell, you would run the following at a command prompt:

export DJANGO_COLORS="light"

You can also customize the colors that are used. Django specifies a number of roles in which color is used:

Each of these roles can be assigned a specific foreground and background color, from the following list:

Each of these colors can then be modified by using the following display options:

A color specification follows one of the following patterns:

where role is the name of a valid color role, fg is the foreground color, bg is the background color and each option is one of the color modifying options. Multiple color specifications are then separated by a semicolon. For example:

export DJANGO_COLORS="error=yellow/blue,blink;notice=magenta"

would specify that errors be displayed using blinking yellow on blue, and notices displayed using magenta. All other color roles would be left uncolored.

Colors can also be specified by extending a base palette. If you put a palette name in a color specification, all the colors implied by that palette will be loaded. So:

export DJANGO_COLORS="light;error=yellow/blue,blink;notice=magenta"

would specify the use of all the colors in the light color palette, except for the colors for errors and notices which would be overridden as specified.

Bash completion

See /howto/custom-management-commands for how to add customized actions.

To call a management command from code use call_command.

Examples:

from django.core import management
from django.core.management.commands import loaddata
management.call_command('flush', verbosity=0, interactive=False)
management.call_command('loaddata', 'test_data', verbosity=0)
management.call_command(loaddata.Command(), 'test_data', verbosity=0)

Note that command options that take no arguments are passed as keywords with True or False, as you can see with the interactive option above.

Named arguments can be passed by using either one of the following syntaxes:

# Similar to the command line
management.call_command('dumpdata', '--natural-foreign')
# Named argument similar to the command line minus the initial dashes and
# with internal dashes replaced by underscores
management.call_command('dumpdata', natural_foreign=True)
# `use_natural_foreign_keys` is the option destination variable
management.call_command('dumpdata', use_natural_foreign_keys=True)

Some command options have different names when using call_command() instead of django-admin or manage.py. For example, django-admin createsuperuser --no-input translates to call_command('createsuperuser', interactive=False). To find what keyword argument name to use for call_command(), check the command's source code for the dest argument passed to parser.add_argument().

Command options which take multiple options are passed a list:

management.call_command('dumpdata', exclude=['contenttypes', 'auth'])

The return value of the call_command() function is the same as the return value of the handle() method of the command.