Django.core.exceptions.improperlyconfigured: the secret_key setting must not be empty.

Question

Problem :

I want to set up the multiple setting files (e.g. Dev, Prod, ..) that include some base settings also. But unable to gain successes in my goal.

Whenever I am trying to run my ./manage.py runserver I am facing the following error:

(cb)alecxe@den /srv/www/cb $ ./manage.py runserver

ImproperlyConfigured: The SECRET_KEY setting must not be empty.

Below is my settings module:

(cb)alecxe@den /srv/www/cb/cb/settings $ ll

total 24

-rw-rw-r--. 1 alecxe alecxe 8230 Dec  2 02:56 base.py

-rw-rw-r--. 1 alecxe alecxe  489 Dec  2 03:09 development.py

-rw-rw-r--. 1 alecxe alecxe   24 Dec  2 02:34 __init__.py

-rw-rw-r--. 1 alecxe alecxe  471 Dec  2 02:51 production.py

 

Code in my manage.py as below:

(cb) alecxe @den /srv/www/cb $ cat manage.py 

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os

import sys

if __name__ == "__main__":

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "cb.settings.development")

from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line

execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)

Answer 1

On my Mac OS I did not like that it did not find the env variable set in my settings file:

# SECURITY WARNING: keep the secret key used in production secret!

SECRET_KEY = os.environ.get('MY_SERVER_ENV_VAR_NAME')

But when I added the env var to my local Mac OS dev env as follows, the error just disappeared:

export MY_SERVER_ENV_VAR_NAME ='fake dev security key that is longer than 50 characters.'

In my case, I also had to add the --settings param:

python3 manage.py check --deploy --settings myappname.settings.production

Here the production.py is a file containing production specific settings inside my settings folder.

Answer 2

 

Solution:

You need to add one to your settings.py.

Django will refuse to start if SECRET_KEY is not set.

The SECRET_KEY can be just about anything...but if you want to use Django to generate one, you can do the following from the python shell:

>>> from django.utils.crypto import get_random_string
>>> chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789!@#$%^&*(-_=+)'
>>> SECRET_KEY = get_random_string(50, chars)
>>> print SECRET_KEY

Copy the SECRET_KEY to your settings file.

I had the same error and it turned out to be a circular dependency between a module or class loaded by the settings and the settings module itself. In my case it was a middleware class which was named in the settings which itself tried to load the settings.

In your $HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/.zshrc or /etc/bashrc or /etc/bash.bashrc according to your unix operating system and terminal manager that you use:

export SECRET_KEY='value_of_the_secret_key_generated_by_get_random_string_function'

you can look something like this:

​
export SECRET_KEY='lmrffsgfhrilklg-za7#57vi!zr)ps8)2anyona25###dl)s-#s=7=vn_'

​

And in the settings.py you can add this:

import os
from django.core.exceptions import ImproperlyConfigured

def get_env_variable(var_name):
    try:
        return os.environ[var_name]
    except KeyError:
        error_msg = "Set the %s environment variable" % var_name
        raise ImproperlyConfigured(error_msg)

SECRET_KEY = get_env_variable('SECRET_KEY')

The function get_env_variable tries to get the variable var_name from the environment, and if it doesn’t find it, it raises an ImproperlyConfigured error. Using it in this way, when you try to run your app and the SECRET_KEY variable is not found, you will be able to see a message indicating why our project fails.