How to change the name of a Django app

Question

I have changed the name of an app in Django by renaming its folder  imports and all its references  templates indexes   But now I get this error when I try to run python manage py runserver  Error  Could not import settings  nameofmynewapp settings   Is it on sys path    No module named settings   How can I debug and solve this error  Any clues

User · Accepted Answer

Follow these steps to change an app s name in Django    Rename the folder which is in your project root  Change any references to your app in their dependencies  i e  the app s views py  urls py    manage py    and settings py files  Edit the database table django content type with the following command  UPDATE django content type SET app label   lt NewAppName gt   WHERE app label   lt OldAppName gt    Also if you have models  you will have to rename the model tables  For postgres use ALTER TABLE  lt oldAppName gt  modelName RENAME TO  lt newAppName gt  modelName  For mysql too I think it is the same  as mentioned by  null radix   For Django    1 7  Update the django migrations table to avoid having your previous migrations re-run  UPDATE django migrations SET app   lt NewAppName gt   WHERE app   lt OldAppName gt    Note  there is some debate  in comments  if this step is required for Django 1 8   If someone knows for sure please update here  If your models py  s Meta Class has app name listed  make sure to rename that too  mentioned by  will   If you ve namespaced your static or templates folders inside your app  you ll also need to rename those  For example  rename old app static old app to new app static new app  For renaming django models  you ll need to change django content type name entry in DB  For postgreSQL use UPDATE django content type SET name   lt newModelName gt   where name   lt oldModelName gt   AND app label   lt OldAppName gt     Meta point  If using virtualenv   Worth noting  if you are renaming the directory that contains your virtualenv  there will likely be several files in your env that contain an absolute path and will also need to be updated  If you are getting errors such as ImportError  No module named     this might be the culprit   thanks to  danyamachine for providing this    Other references  you might also want to refer the below links for a more complete picture   Renaming an app with Django and South How do I migrate a model out of one django app and into a new one  How to change the name of a Django app  Backwards migration with Django South Easiest way to rename a model using Django South  Python code  thanks to A Raouf  to automate the above steps  Untested code  You have been warned   Python code  thanks to rafaponieman  to automate the above steps  Untested code  You have been warned

User · Answer

Fun problem  I m going to have to rename a lot of apps soon  so I did a dry run   This method allows progress to be made in atomic steps  to minimise disruption for other developers working on the app you re renaming   See the link at the bottom of this answer for working example code    Prepare existing code for the move    Create an app config  set name and label to defaults   Add the app config to INSTALLED APPS  On all models  explicitly set db table to the current value  Doctor migrations so that db table was  always  explicitly defined  Ensure no migrations are required  checks previous step    Change the app label    Set label in app config to new app name  Update migrations and foreign keys to reference new app label  Update templates for generic class-based views  the default path is  lt app label gt   lt model name gt   lt suffix gt  html  Run raw SQL to fix migrations and content types app  unfortunately  some raw SQL is unavoidable   You can not run this in a migration   UPDATE django migrations    SET app    catalogue   WHERE app    shop    UPDATE django content type    SET app label    catalogue   WHERE app label    shop    Ensure no migrations are required  checks previous step    Rename the tables    Remove  custom  db table  Run makemigrations so django can rename the table  to the default    Move the files    Rename module directory  Fix imports  Update app config s name  Update where INSTALLED APPS references the app config   Tidy up    Remove custom app config if it s no longer required  If app config gone  don t forget to also remove it from INSTALLED APPS       Example solution  I ve created app-rename-example  an example project where you can see how I renamed an app  one commit at a time   The example uses Python 2 7 and Django 1 8  but I m confident the same process will work on at least Python 3 6 and Django 2 1

User · Answer

If you use Pycharm  renaming an app is very easy with refactoring Shift F6 default  for all project files  But make sure you delete the   pycache   folders in the project directory  amp  its sub-directories  Also be careful as it also renames comments too which you can exclude in the refactor preview window it will show you  And you ll have to rename OldNameConfig AppConfig   in apps py of your renamed app in addition   If you do not want to lose data of your database  you ll have to manually do it with query in database like the aforementioned answer

User · Answer

In case you are using PyCharm and project stops working after rename    Edit Run Debug configuration and change environment variable DJANGO SETTINGS MODULE  since it includes your project name  Go to Settings   Languages  amp  Frameworks   Django and update the settings file location

User · Answer

Re-migrate approach for a cleaner plate    This can painlessly be done IF other apps do not foreign key models from the app to be renamed  Check and make sure their migration files don t list any migrations from this one      Backup your database  Dump all tables with a  data   schema for possible circular dependencies  and b  just data for reloading   Run your tests   Check all code into VCS   Delete the database tables of the app to be renamed  Delete the permissions  delete from auth permission where content type id in  select id from django content type where app label     lt OldAppName gt    Delete content types  delete from django content type where app label     lt OldAppName gt   Rename the folder of the app   Change any references to your app in their dependencies  i e  the app s views py  urls py    manage py    and settings py files  Delete migrations  delete from django migrations where app     lt OldAppName gt   If your models py  s Meta Class has app name listed  make sure to rename that too  mentioned by  will   If you ve namespaced your static or templates folders inside your app  you ll also need to rename those  For example  rename old app static old app to new app static new app  If you defined app config in apps py  rename those  and rename their references in settings INSTALLED APPS Delete migration files   Re-make migrations  and migrate   Load your table data from backups

User · Answer

New in Django 1 7 is a app registry that stores configuration and provides introspection  This machinery let s you change several app attributes   The main point I want to make is that renaming an app isn t always necessary  With app configuration it is possible to resolve conflicting apps  But also the way to go if your app needs friendly naming   As an example I want to name my polls app  Feedback from users   It goes like this   Create a apps py file in the polls directory   from django apps import AppConfig  class PollsConfig AppConfig       name    polls      verbose name    Feedback from users    Add the default app config to your polls   init   py   default app config    polls apps PollsConfig    For more app configuration  https   docs djangoproject com en 1 7 ref applications

User · Answer

Why not just use the option Find and Replace   every code editor has it    For example Visual Studio Code  under Edit option      You just type in old name and new name and replace everyhting in the project with one click   NOTE  This renames only file content  NOT file and folder names  Do not forget renaming folders  eg  templates my app name  rename it to templates my app new name

User · Answer

In many cases  I believe  allcaps s answer works well  However  sometimes it is necessary to actually rename an app  e g  to improve code readability or prevent confusion  Most of the other answers involve either manual database manipulation or tinkering with existing migrations  which I do not like very much  As an alternative  I like to create a new app with the desired name  copy everything over  make sure it works  then remove the original app   Start a new app with the desired name  and copy all code from the original app into that  Make sure you fix the namespaced stuff  in the newly copied code  to match the new app name   makemigrations and migrate  Create a data migration that copies the relevant data from the original app s tables into the new app s tables  and migrate again    At this point  everything still works  because the original app and its data are still in place   Now you can refactor all the dependent code  so it only makes use of the new app  See other answers for examples of what to look out for   Once you are certain that everything works  you can remove the original app    This has the advantage that every step uses the normal Django migration mechanism  without manual database manipulation  and we can track everything in source control  In addition  we keep the original app and its data in place until we are sure everything works

[python] How to change the name of a Django app?

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