Read a local file in django

Question

I’m quite stuck on this one!
I am writing a Django view that reads data from an external database. To do this, I am using the standard MySQLdb library.
Now, to load the data, I must do a very long and complex query. I can hard code that query in my view and that works just fine.
But I think that is not practical; I want to be able to change the query in the future, so I try to load the statement from a text file.
My problem is that I don’t know where to store and how to open that file. Wherever I do, I get a “No such file or directory” error. Even saving it in the same directory than the code of the view fails.

Note that this is not an uploaded file; it’s just an external file that completes my code.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!

Asked By: fenomenoxp

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Source

Answer 1

Keep the file in django project root and add the following in the settings.py file.

PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))

Then in the view do this.

import os
from django.conf.settings import PROJECT_ROOT

file_ = open(os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'filename'))

Update:

In newer Django versions BASE_DIR is already defined in the settings.py file. So you can do the following.

import os
from django.conf import settings

file_ = open(os.path.join(settings.BASE_DIR, 'filename'))

Answered By: Rag Sagar

Answer 2

For this use, I’d put it in the settings module. In settings.py, add e.g. MY_LONG_QUERY = 'from FOO select BAR...'. Then, in your view just load it from the settings like so:

from django.conf import settings
settings.MY_LONG_QUERY

But, this doesn’t really answer your question. Assuming permissions and all are correct, keep a reference to your project root in your settings like this:

ROOT_PATH = os.path.split(os.path.abspath(__file__))[0]

And then again in your view, open your file like so:

from django.conf import settings

def read_from_database(request):
    f = open(os.path.join(settings.ROOT_PATH, 'myfile.db'))
    # Do something with f

Answered By: jro

Read a local file in django

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