Canonical location for local apps

Cookiecutter-django defines apps inside project folder, i.e.: red_dwarf/red_dwarf/users. I tried following the convention, but Django complains that it can’t find my module, e.g.:

md red_dwarf/posts
python manage.py startapp red_dwarf/posts

config/settings/common.py

LOCAL_APPS = (
    'ref_dwarf.posts.apps.PostsConfig',
)

ImportError: No module named ‘posts’

I’d have to adjust sys.path to include the APPS_DIR, but then Django complains, burns, and crashes with Model class [...] doesn't declare an explicit app_label and isn't in an application in INSTALLED_APPS

So my question is, what is the recommended location for local apps? I’ve red the docs back to back, gh issues, and the internets but could not find a meaningful answer.

[carlosfunk]

I’ve just been struggling with this myself, I had the same issue as @ltankey, tried @browniebroke suggestion but it created the files in the project folder. The only way I could create an app using docker-compose was to log in to a shell and create it from within the project folder.

$ docker-compose -f local.yml run --rm django sh
# cd <project>
# python ../manage.py startapp <appname>

[Sgiath]

As I understand it you should not create your app with startapp command. If you want new app posts just do this in the project root:

mkdir red_dwarf/posts
cd red_dwarf/posts
touch apps.py models.py urls.py views.py

Into your apps.py add this code:

from django.apps import AppConfig


class PostsConfig(AppConfig):
    name = 'red_dwarf.posts'
    verbose_name = 'Posts'

and in config/settings/common.py into LOCAL_APPS add red_dwarf.posts so it will looks like this:

LOCAL_APPS = (
    # custom users app
    'red_dwarf.users.apps.UsersConfig',
    'red_dwarf.posts',
)

And you can start code your app. It works perfectly for me.