Support sqlite database urls relative to project path.

When developing it makes sense to have the database file in the local repository directory, to have a dev.env which is valid for all developers it needs to be relative…

I have been doing hacks in settings.py to get around it for a few years now but I would like a discussion about how to maybe integrate such a feature into django-environ.

This basically just assumes that if the the file is at the root of the system it’s instead relative but I’m looking for a way to get rid of these in every project…

for db in DATABASES:
    if DATABASES[db]['ENGINE'] == 'django.db.backends.sqlite3':
        if os.path.split(DATABASES[db]['NAME'])[0] == "/":
            DATABASES[db]['NAME'] = root(DATABASES[db]['NAME'][1:])

I am thinking that this is kind of sane because no one proably stores the database in the root of the file system but making it optional by having a sqlite_root argument to the db-url function maybe works?

root = environ.Path(__file__) - 2
...
DATABASES = {
    'default': env.db(sqlite_root=root()),
}

I think that both relative AND absolute paths should work.

One option which I think might work safely for triggering a relative path instead of absolute is to do it when host is . or some other reserved name which isn’t really a hostname. It should error out if sqlite_root was not provided to the url parse function.

DATABASE_URL=sqlite://./db.sqlite3

Please share your opinions on this…

[joke2k]

Hi @tomasf The file url syntax for dbs allows your to put you db everywhere in your filesystem. Relative or absolute too. See the tips for sqlite in Readme. If I correctly understand what do you mean, you need to have dev.env with relative path for db… so you can use sqlite:///db.sqlite for a db in the same dir of .env file and sqlite://../db.sqlite for relative one and sqlite:////home/user/db.sqlite for absolute one. Is it right for you?

[sergeyklay]

I’d like django-environ remain simple as long as possible. I’d not complicate its codebase without an urgent and obvious need. To all those who want to work with relative paths, I would recommend some kind of approach like this:

# .env file contents
DATABASE_URL=sqlite:///db.sqlite3

# settings.py file contents
import environ
import os


env = environ.Env()

# Set the project base directory
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))

# Take environment variables from .env file
env.read_env(os.path.join(BASE_DIR, '.env'))


def get_db_config(environ_var):
    """Get Database configuration."""
    options = env.db(var=environ_var, default='sqlite:///db.sqlite3')
    if options.get('ENGINE') != 'django.db.backends.sqlite3':
        return options

    # This will allow use a relative to the project root DB path
    # for SQLite like 'sqlite:///db.sqlite3'
    if not options['NAME'] == ':memory:' and not os.path.isabs(options['NAME']):
        options.update({'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, options['NAME'])})

    return options


DATABASES = {
    'default': get_db_config('DATABASE_URL'),
}