django/docs/ref/settings.txt

.. _ref-settings:

Available settings
==================

Here's a full list of all available settings, in alphabetical order, and their
default values.

.. setting:: ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES

ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES
----------------------

Default: ``{}`` (Empty dictionary)

A dictionary mapping ``"app_label.model_name"`` strings to functions that take
a model object and return its URL. This is a way of overriding
``get_absolute_url()`` methods on a per-installation basis. Example::

    ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES = {
        'blogs.weblog': lambda o: "/blogs/%s/" % o.slug,
        'news.story': lambda o: "/stories/%s/%s/" % (o.pub_year, o.slug),
    }

Note that the model name used in this setting should be all lower-case, regardless
of the case of the actual model class name.

.. setting:: ADMIN_FOR

ADMIN_FOR
---------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

Used for admin-site settings modules, this should be a tuple of settings
modules (in the format ``'foo.bar.baz'``) for which this site is an admin.

The admin site uses this in its automatically-introspected documentation of
models, views and template tags.

.. setting:: ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX

ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX
------------------

Default: ``'/media/'``

The URL prefix for admin media -- CSS, JavaScript and images used by
the Django administrative interface. Make sure to use a trailing
slash, and to have this be different from the ``MEDIA_URL`` setting
(since the same URL cannot be mapped onto two different sets of
files).

.. setting:: ADMINS

ADMINS
------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

A tuple that lists people who get code error notifications. When
``DEBUG=False`` and a view raises an exception, Django will e-mail these people
with the full exception information. Each member of the tuple should be a tuple
of (Full name, e-mail address). Example::

    (('John', 'john@example.com'), ('Mary', 'mary@example.com'))

Note that Django will e-mail *all* of these people whenever an error happens.
See :ref:`howto-error-reporting` for more information.

.. setting:: ALLOWED_INCLUDE_ROOTS

ALLOWED_INCLUDE_ROOTS
---------------------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

A tuple of strings representing allowed prefixes for the ``{% ssi %}`` template
tag. This is a security measure, so that template authors can't access files
that they shouldn't be accessing.

For example, if ``ALLOWED_INCLUDE_ROOTS`` is ``('/home/html', '/var/www')``,
then ``{% ssi /home/html/foo.txt %}`` would work, but ``{% ssi /etc/passwd %}``
wouldn't.

.. setting:: APPEND_SLASH

APPEND_SLASH
------------

Default: ``True``

Whether to append trailing slashes to URLs. This is only used if
``CommonMiddleware`` is installed (see :ref:`topics-http-middleware`). See also
``PREPEND_WWW``.

.. setting:: AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS
-----------------------

Default: ``('django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',)``

A tuple of authentication backend classes (as strings) to use when attempting to
authenticate a user. See the :ref:`authentication backends documentation
<authentication-backends>` for details.

.. setting:: AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE

AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE
-------------------

Default: Not defined

The site-specific user profile model used by this site. See
:ref:`auth-profiles`.

.. setting:: CACHE_BACKEND

CACHE_BACKEND
-------------

Default: ``'locmem://'``

The cache backend to use. See :ref:`topics-cache`.

.. setting:: CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_KEY_PREFIX

CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_KEY_PREFIX
---------------------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

The cache key prefix that the cache middleware should use. See
:ref:`topics-cache`.

.. setting:: CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_SECONDS

CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_SECONDS
------------------------

Default: ``600``

The default number of seconds to cache a page when the caching middleware or
``cache_page()`` decorator is used.

.. setting:: CSRF_COOKIE_NAME

CSRF_COOKIE_NAME
----------------

.. versionadded:: 1.2

Default: ``'csrftoken'``

The name of the cookie to use for the CSRF authentication token. This can be whatever you
want.  See :ref:`ref-contrib-csrf`.

.. setting:: CSRF_COOKIE_DOMAIN

CSRF_COOKIE_DOMAIN
------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.2

Default: ``None``

The domain to be used when setting the CSRF cookie.  This can be useful for
allowing cross-subdomain requests to be exluded from the normal cross site
request forgery protection.  It should be set to a string such as
``".lawrence.com"`` to allow a POST request from a form on one subdomain to be
accepted by accepted by a view served from another subdomain.

.. setting:: CSRF_FAILURE_VIEW

CSRF_FAILURE_VIEW
-----------------

.. versionadded:: 1.2

Default: ``'django.views.csrf.csrf_failure'``

A dotted path to the view function to be used when an incoming request
is rejected by the CSRF protection.  The function should have this signature::

  def csrf_failure(request, reason="")

where ``reason`` is a short message (intended for developers or logging, not for
end users) indicating the reason the request was rejected.  See
:ref:`ref-contrib-csrf`.

.. setting:: DATABASE_ENGINE

DATABASE_ENGINE
---------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

The database backend to use. The built-in database backends are
``'postgresql_psycopg2'``, ``'postgresql'``, ``'mysql'``, ``'sqlite3'``, and
``'oracle'``.

You can use a database backend that doesn't ship with Django by setting
``DATABASE_ENGINE`` to a fully-qualified path (i.e.
``mypackage.backends.whatever``). Writing a whole new database backend from
scratch is left as an exercise to the reader; see the other backends for
examples.

.. versionadded:: 1.0
    Support for external database backends is new in 1.0.

.. setting:: DATABASE_HOST

DATABASE_HOST
-------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

Which host to use when connecting to the database. An empty string means
localhost. Not used with SQLite.

If this value starts with a forward slash (``'/'``) and you're using MySQL,
MySQL will connect via a Unix socket to the specified socket. For example::

    DATABASE_HOST = '/var/run/mysql'

If you're using MySQL and this value *doesn't* start with a forward slash, then
this value is assumed to be the host.

If you're using PostgreSQL, an empty string means to use a Unix domain socket
for the connection, rather than a network connection to localhost. If you
explicitly need to use a TCP/IP connection on the local machine with
PostgreSQL, specify ``localhost`` here.

.. setting:: DATABASE_NAME

DATABASE_NAME
-------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

The name of the database to use. For SQLite, it's the full path to the database
file. When specifying the path, always use forward slashes, even on Windows
(e.g. ``C:/homes/user/mysite/sqlite3.db``).

.. setting:: DATABASE_OPTIONS

DATABASE_OPTIONS
----------------

Default: ``{}`` (Empty dictionary)

Extra parameters to use when connecting to the database. Consult backend
module's document for available keywords.

.. setting:: DATABASE_PASSWORD

DATABASE_PASSWORD
-----------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

The password to use when connecting to the database. Not used with SQLite.

.. setting:: DATABASE_PORT

DATABASE_PORT
-------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

The port to use when connecting to the database. An empty string means the
default port. Not used with SQLite.

.. setting:: DATABASE_USER

DATABASE_USER
-------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

The username to use when connecting to the database. Not used with SQLite.

.. setting:: DATE_FORMAT

DATE_FORMAT
-----------

Default: ``'N j, Y'`` (e.g. ``Feb. 4, 2003``)

The default formatting to use for date fields on Django admin change-list
pages -- and, possibly, by other parts of the system. See
:ttag:`allowed date format strings <now>`.

See also ``DATETIME_FORMAT``, ``TIME_FORMAT``, ``YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT``
and ``MONTH_DAY_FORMAT``.

.. setting:: DATETIME_FORMAT

DATETIME_FORMAT
---------------

Default: ``'N j, Y, P'`` (e.g. ``Feb. 4, 2003, 4 p.m.``)

The default formatting to use for datetime fields on Django admin change-list
pages -- and, possibly, by other parts of the system. See
:ttag:`allowed date format strings <now>`.

See also ``DATE_FORMAT``, ``DATETIME_FORMAT``, ``TIME_FORMAT``,
``YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT`` and ``MONTH_DAY_FORMAT``.

.. setting:: DEBUG

DEBUG
-----

Default: ``False``

A boolean that turns on/off debug mode.

If you define custom settings, `django/views/debug.py`_ has a ``HIDDEN_SETTINGS``
regular expression which will hide from the DEBUG view anything that contains
``'SECRET'``, ``'PASSWORD'``, or ``'PROFANITIES'``. This allows untrusted users to
be able to give backtraces without seeing sensitive (or offensive) settings.

Still, note that there are always going to be sections of your debug output that
are inappropriate for public consumption. File paths, configuration options, and
the like all give attackers extra information about your server.

It is also important to remember that when running with ``DEBUG`` turned on, Django
will remember every SQL query it executes. This is useful when you are debugging,
but on a production server, it will rapidly consume memory.

Never deploy a site into production with ``DEBUG`` turned on.

.. _django/views/debug.py: http://code.djangoproject.com/browser/django/trunk/django/views/debug.py

DEBUG_PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS
--------------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``False``

If set to True, Django's normal exception handling of view functions
will be suppressed, and exceptions will propagate upwards.  This can
be useful for some test setups, and should never be used on a live
site.


.. setting:: DEFAULT_CHARSET

DEFAULT_CHARSET
---------------

Default: ``'utf-8'``

Default charset to use for all ``HttpResponse`` objects, if a MIME type isn't
manually specified. Used with ``DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE`` to construct the
``Content-Type`` header.

.. setting:: DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE

DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE
--------------------

Default: ``'text/html'``

Default content type to use for all ``HttpResponse`` objects, if a MIME type
isn't manually specified. Used with ``DEFAULT_CHARSET`` to construct the
``Content-Type`` header.

.. setting:: DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL

DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE
--------------------

Default: ``'django.core.files.storage.FileSystemStorage'``

Default file storage class to be used for any file-related operations that don't
specify a particular storage system. See :ref:`topics-files`.

DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL
------------------

Default: ``'webmaster@localhost'``

Default e-mail address to use for various automated correspondence from the
site manager(s).

.. setting:: DEFAULT_TABLESPACE

DEFAULT_TABLESPACE
------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

Default tablespace to use for models that don't specify one, if the
backend supports it.

.. setting:: DEFAULT_INDEX_TABLESPACE

DEFAULT_INDEX_TABLESPACE
------------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

Default tablespace to use for indexes on fields that don't specify
one, if the backend supports it.

.. setting:: DISALLOWED_USER_AGENTS

DISALLOWED_USER_AGENTS
----------------------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

List of compiled regular expression objects representing User-Agent strings that
are not allowed to visit any page, systemwide. Use this for bad robots/crawlers.
This is only used if ``CommonMiddleware`` is installed (see
:ref:`topics-http-middleware`).

.. setting:: EMAIL_BACKEND

EMAIL_BACKEND
-------------

.. versionadded:: 1.2

Default: ``'django.core.mail.backends.smtp'``

The backend to use for sending emails. For the list of available backends see
:ref:`topics-email`.

.. setting:: EMAIL_FILE_PATH

EMAIL_FILE_PATH
---------------

.. versionadded:: 1.2

Default: Not defined

The directory used by the ``file`` email backend to store output files.

.. setting:: EMAIL_HOST

EMAIL_HOST
----------

Default: ``'localhost'``

The host to use for sending e-mail.

See also ``EMAIL_PORT``.

.. setting:: EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD

EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD
-------------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

Password to use for the SMTP server defined in ``EMAIL_HOST``. This setting is
used in conjunction with ``EMAIL_HOST_USER`` when authenticating to the SMTP
server. If either of these settings is empty, Django won't attempt
authentication.

See also ``EMAIL_HOST_USER``.

.. setting:: EMAIL_HOST_USER

EMAIL_HOST_USER
---------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

Username to use for the SMTP server defined in ``EMAIL_HOST``. If empty,
Django won't attempt authentication.

See also ``EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD``.

.. setting:: EMAIL_PORT

EMAIL_PORT
----------

Default: ``25``

Port to use for the SMTP server defined in ``EMAIL_HOST``.

.. setting:: EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX

EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX
--------------------

Default: ``'[Django] '``

Subject-line prefix for e-mail messages sent with ``django.core.mail.mail_admins``
or ``django.core.mail.mail_managers``. You'll probably want to include the
trailing space.

.. setting:: EMAIL_USE_TLS

EMAIL_USE_TLS
-------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``False``

Whether to use a TLS (secure) connection when talking to the SMTP server.

.. setting:: FILE_CHARSET

FILE_CHARSET
------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``'utf-8'``

The character encoding used to decode any files read from disk. This includes
template files and initial SQL data files.

.. setting:: FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS

FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS
--------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default::

    ("django.core.files.uploadhandler.MemoryFileUploadHandler",
     "django.core.files.uploadhandler.TemporaryFileUploadHandler",)

A tuple of handlers to use for uploading. See :ref:`topics-files` for details.

.. setting:: FILE_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE

FILE_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE
---------------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``2621440`` (i.e. 2.5 MB).

The maximum size (in bytes) that an upload will be before it gets streamed to
the file system. See :ref:`topics-files` for details.

.. setting:: FILE_UPLOAD_TEMP_DIR

FILE_UPLOAD_TEMP_DIR
--------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``None``

The directory to store data temporarily while uploading files. If ``None``,
Django will use the standard temporary directory for the operating system. For
example, this will default to '/tmp' on \*nix-style operating systems.

See :ref:`topics-files` for details.

.. setting:: FILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS

FILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS
-----------------------

Default: ``None``

The numeric mode (i.e. ``0644``) to set newly uploaded files to. For
more information about what these modes mean, see the `documentation for
os.chmod`_

If this isn't given or is ``None``, you'll get operating-system
dependent behavior. On most platforms, temporary files will have a mode
of ``0600``, and files saved from memory will be saved using the
system's standard umask.

.. warning::

    **Always prefix the mode with a 0.**

    If you're not familiar with file modes, please note that the leading
    ``0`` is very important: it indicates an octal number, which is the
    way that modes must be specified. If you try to use ``644``, you'll
    get totally incorrect behavior.


.. _documentation for os.chmod: http://docs.python.org/lib/os-file-dir.html

.. setting:: FIXTURE_DIRS

FIXTURE_DIRS
-------------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

List of locations of the fixture data files, in search order. Note that
these paths should use Unix-style forward slashes, even on Windows. See
:ref:`topics-testing`.

FORCE_SCRIPT_NAME
------------------

Default: ``None``

If not ``None``, this will be used as the value of the ``SCRIPT_NAME``
environment variable in any HTTP request. This setting can be used to override
the server-provided value of ``SCRIPT_NAME``, which may be a rewritten version
of the preferred value or not supplied at all.

.. setting:: IGNORABLE_404_ENDS

IGNORABLE_404_ENDS
------------------

Default: ``('mail.pl', 'mailform.pl', 'mail.cgi', 'mailform.cgi', 'favicon.ico', '.php')``

See also ``IGNORABLE_404_STARTS`` and ``Error reporting via e-mail``.

.. setting:: IGNORABLE_404_STARTS

IGNORABLE_404_STARTS
--------------------

Default: ``('/cgi-bin/', '/_vti_bin', '/_vti_inf')``

A tuple of strings that specify beginnings of URLs that should be ignored by
the 404 e-mailer. See ``SEND_BROKEN_LINK_EMAILS``, ``IGNORABLE_404_ENDS`` and
the :ref:`howto-error-reporting`.

.. setting:: INSTALLED_APPS

INSTALLED_APPS
--------------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

A tuple of strings designating all applications that are enabled in this Django
installation. Each string should be a full Python path to a Python package that
contains a Django application, as created by :djadmin:`django-admin.py startapp
<startapp>`.

.. setting:: INTERNAL_IPS

INTERNAL_IPS
------------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

A tuple of IP addresses, as strings, that:

    * See debug comments, when ``DEBUG`` is ``True``
    * Receive X headers if the ``XViewMiddleware`` is installed (see
      :ref:`topics-http-middleware`)

.. setting:: LANGUAGE_CODE

LANGUAGE_CODE
-------------

Default: ``'en-us'``

A string representing the language code for this installation. This should be in
standard language format. For example, U.S. English is ``"en-us"``. See
:ref:`topics-i18n`.

.. setting:: LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME

LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME
--------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``'django_language'``

The name of the cookie to use for the language cookie. This can be whatever you
want (but should be different from ``SESSION_COOKIE_NAME``). See
:ref:`topics-i18n`.

.. setting:: LANGUAGES

LANGUAGES
---------

Default: A tuple of all available languages. This list is continually growing
and including a copy here would inevitably become rapidly out of date. You can
see the current list of translated languages by looking in
``django/conf/global_settings.py`` (or view the `online source`_).

.. _online source: http://code.djangoproject.com/browser/django/trunk/django/conf/global_settings.py

The list is a tuple of two-tuples in the format (language code, language
name) -- for example, ``('ja', 'Japanese')``. This specifies which languages
are available for language selection. See :ref:`topics-i18n`.

Generally, the default value should suffice. Only set this setting if you want
to restrict language selection to a subset of the Django-provided languages.

If you define a custom ``LANGUAGES`` setting, it's OK to mark the languages as
translation strings (as in the default value displayed above) -- but use a
"dummy" ``gettext()`` function, not the one in ``django.utils.translation``.
You should *never* import ``django.utils.translation`` from within your
settings file, because that module in itself depends on the settings, and that
would cause a circular import.

The solution is to use a "dummy" ``gettext()`` function. Here's a sample
settings file::

    gettext = lambda s: s

    LANGUAGES = (
        ('de', gettext('German')),
        ('en', gettext('English')),
    )

With this arrangement, ``django-admin.py makemessages`` will still find and
mark these strings for translation, but the translation won't happen at
runtime -- so you'll have to remember to wrap the languages in the *real*
``gettext()`` in any code that uses ``LANGUAGES`` at runtime.

.. setting:: LOCALE_PATHS

LOCALE_PATHS
------------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

A tuple of directories where Django looks for translation files.
See :ref:`translations-in-your-own-projects`.

.. setting:: LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL

LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL
------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``'/accounts/profile/'``

The URL where requests are redirected after login when the
``contrib.auth.login`` view gets no ``next`` parameter.

This is used by the :func:`~django.contrib.auth.decorators.login_required`
decorator, for example.

.. setting:: LOGIN_URL

LOGIN_URL
---------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``'/accounts/login/'``

The URL where requests are redirected for login, specially when using the
:func:`~django.contrib.auth.decorators.login_required` decorator.

.. setting:: LOGOUT_URL

LOGOUT_URL
----------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``'/accounts/logout/'``

LOGIN_URL counterpart.

.. setting:: MANAGERS

MANAGERS
--------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

A tuple in the same format as ``ADMINS`` that specifies who should get
broken-link notifications when ``SEND_BROKEN_LINK_EMAILS=True``.

.. setting:: MEDIA_ROOT

MEDIA_ROOT
----------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

Absolute path to the directory that holds media for this installation.
Example: ``"/home/media/media.lawrence.com/"`` See also ``MEDIA_URL``.

.. setting:: MEDIA_URL

MEDIA_URL
---------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

URL that handles the media served from ``MEDIA_ROOT``.
Example: ``"http://media.lawrence.com"``

Note that this should have a trailing slash if it has a path component.

Good: ``"http://www.example.com/static/"``
Bad: ``"http://www.example.com/static"``

.. setting:: MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES

MESSAGE_LEVEL
-------------

.. versionadded:: 1.2

Default: `messages.INFO`

Sets the minimum message level that will be recorded by the messages
framework. See the :ref:`messages documentation <ref-contrib-messages>` for
more details.

MESSAGE_STORAGE
---------------

.. versionadded:: 1.2

Default: ``'django.contrib.messages.storage.user_messages.LegacyFallbackStorage'``

Controls where Django stores message data.  See the
:ref:`messages documentation <ref-contrib-messages>` for more details.

MESSAGE_TAGS
------------

.. versionadded:: 1.2

Default::

        {messages.DEBUG: 'debug',
        messages.INFO: 'info',
        messages.SUCCESS: 'success',
        messages.WARNING: 'warning',
        messages.ERROR: 'error',}

Sets the mapping of message levels to message tags. See the
:ref:`messages documentation <ref-contrib-messages>` for more details.

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES
------------------

Default::

    ('django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
     'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
     'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
     'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
     'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',)

A tuple of middleware classes to use. See :ref:`topics-http-middleware`.

.. versionchanged:: 1.2
   ``'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware'`` was added to the
   default.  For more information, see the :ref:`messages documentation
   <ref-contrib-messages>`.

.. setting:: MONTH_DAY_FORMAT

MONTH_DAY_FORMAT
----------------

Default: ``'F j'``

The default formatting to use for date fields on Django admin change-list
pages -- and, possibly, by other parts of the system -- in cases when only the
month and day are displayed.

For example, when a Django admin change-list page is being filtered by a date
drilldown, the header for a given day displays the day and month. Different
locales have different formats. For example, U.S. English would say
"January 1," whereas Spanish might say "1 Enero."

See :ttag:`allowed date format strings <now>`. See also ``DATE_FORMAT``,
``DATETIME_FORMAT``, ``TIME_FORMAT`` and ``YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT``.

.. setting:: PREPEND_WWW

PREPEND_WWW
-----------

Default: ``False``

Whether to prepend the "www." subdomain to URLs that don't have it. This is only
used if ``CommonMiddleware`` is installed (see :ref:`topics-http-middleware`).
See also ``APPEND_SLASH``.

.. setting:: PROFANITIES_LIST

PROFANITIES_LIST
----------------

A tuple of profanities, as strings, that will trigger a validation error when
the ``hasNoProfanities`` validator is called.

We don't list the default values here, because that would be profane. To see
the default values, see the file `django/conf/global_settings.py`_.

.. _django/conf/global_settings.py: http://code.djangoproject.com/browser/django/trunk/django/conf/global_settings.py
.. setting:: ROOT_URLCONF

ROOT_URLCONF
------------

Default: Not defined

A string representing the full Python import path to your root URLconf. For example:
``"mydjangoapps.urls"``. Can be overridden on a per-request basis by
setting the attribute ``urlconf`` on the incoming ``HttpRequest``
object. See :ref:`how-django-processes-a-request` for details.

.. setting:: SECRET_KEY

SECRET_KEY
----------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

A secret key for this particular Django installation. Used to provide a seed in
secret-key hashing algorithms. Set this to a random string -- the longer, the
better. ``django-admin.py startproject`` creates one automatically.

.. setting:: SEND_BROKEN_LINK_EMAILS

SEND_BROKEN_LINK_EMAILS
-----------------------

Default: ``False``

Whether to send an e-mail to the ``MANAGERS`` each time somebody visits a
Django-powered page that is 404ed with a non-empty referer (i.e., a broken
link). This is only used if ``CommonMiddleware`` is installed (see
:ref:`topics-http-middleware`. See also ``IGNORABLE_404_STARTS``,
``IGNORABLE_404_ENDS`` and :ref:`howto-error-reporting`.

.. setting:: SERIALIZATION_MODULES

SERIALIZATION_MODULES
---------------------

Default: Not defined.

A dictionary of modules containing serializer definitions (provided as
strings), keyed by a string identifier for that serialization type. For
example, to define a YAML serializer, use::

    SERIALIZATION_MODULES = { 'yaml' : 'path.to.yaml_serializer' }

.. setting:: SERVER_EMAIL

SERVER_EMAIL
------------

Default: ``'root@localhost'``

The e-mail address that error messages come from, such as those sent to
``ADMINS`` and ``MANAGERS``.

.. setting:: SESSION_ENGINE

SESSION_ENGINE
--------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``django.contrib.sessions.backends.db``

Controls where Django stores session data. Valid values are:

    * ``'django.contrib.sessions.backends.db'``
    * ``'django.contrib.sessions.backends.file'``
    * ``'django.contrib.sessions.backends.cache'``

See :ref:`topics-http-sessions`.

.. setting:: SESSION_COOKIE_AGE

SESSION_COOKIE_AGE
------------------

Default: ``1209600`` (2 weeks, in seconds)

The age of session cookies, in seconds. See :ref:`topics-http-sessions`.

.. setting:: SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN

SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN
---------------------

Default: ``None``

The domain to use for session cookies. Set this to a string such as
``".lawrence.com"`` for cross-domain cookies, or use ``None`` for a standard
domain cookie. See the :ref:`topics-http-sessions`.

.. setting:: SESSION_COOKIE_NAME

SESSION_COOKIE_NAME
-------------------

Default: ``'sessionid'``

The name of the cookie to use for sessions. This can be whatever you want (but
should be different from ``LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME``). See the :ref:`topics-http-sessions`.

.. setting:: SESSION_COOKIE_PATH

SESSION_COOKIE_PATH
-------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``'/'``

The path set on the session cookie. This should either match the URL path of your
Django installation or be parent of that path.

This is useful if you have multiple Django instances running under the same
hostname. They can use different cookie paths, and each instance will only see
its own session cookie.

.. setting:: SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE

SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE
---------------------

Default: ``False``

Whether to use a secure cookie for the session cookie. If this is set to
``True``, the cookie will be marked as "secure," which means browsers may
ensure that the cookie is only sent under an HTTPS connection.
See the :ref:`topics-http-sessions`.

.. setting:: SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE

SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE
-------------------------------

Default: ``False``

Whether to expire the session when the user closes his or her browser.
See the :ref:`topics-http-sessions`.

.. setting:: SESSION_FILE_PATH

SESSION_FILE_PATH
-----------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``None``

If you're using file-based session storage, this sets the directory in
which Django will store session data. See :ref:`topics-http-sessions`. When
the default value (``None``) is used, Django will use the standard temporary
directory for the system.

.. setting:: SESSION_SAVE_EVERY_REQUEST

SESSION_SAVE_EVERY_REQUEST
--------------------------

Default: ``False``

Whether to save the session data on every request. See
:ref:`topics-http-sessions`.

.. setting:: SITE_ID

SITE_ID
-------

Default: Not defined

The ID, as an integer, of the current site in the ``django_site`` database
table. This is used so that application data can hook into specific site(s)
and a single database can manage content for multiple sites.

See :ref:`ref-contrib-sites`.

.. _site framework docs: ../sites/

.. setting:: TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS
---------------------------

Default::

    ("django.core.context_processors.auth",
    "django.core.context_processors.debug",
    "django.core.context_processors.i18n",
    "django.core.context_processors.media",
    "django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages")

A tuple of callables that are used to populate the context in ``RequestContext``.
These callables take a request object as their argument and return a dictionary
of items to be merged into the context.

.. versionchanged:: 1.2
   ``"django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages"`` was added to the
   default.  For more information, see the :ref:`messages documentation
   <ref-contrib-messages>`.

.. setting:: TEMPLATE_DEBUG

TEMPLATE_DEBUG
--------------

Default: ``False``

A boolean that turns on/off template debug mode. If this is ``True``, the fancy
error page will display a detailed report for any ``TemplateSyntaxError``. This
report contains the relevant snippet of the template, with the appropriate line
highlighted.

Note that Django only displays fancy error pages if ``DEBUG`` is ``True``, so
you'll want to set that to take advantage of this setting.

See also ``DEBUG``.

.. setting:: TEMPLATE_DIRS

TEMPLATE_DIRS
-------------

Default: ``()`` (Empty tuple)

List of locations of the template source files, in search order. Note that
these paths should use Unix-style forward slashes, even on Windows.

See :ref:`topics-templates`..

.. setting:: TEMPLATE_LOADERS

TEMPLATE_LOADERS
----------------

Default::

     ('django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
      'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader')

A tuple of template loader classes, specified as strings. Each ``Loader`` class
knows how to import templates from a particular sources. Optionally, a tuple can be
used instead of a string. The first item in the tuple should be the ``Loader``'s
module, subsequent items are passed to the ``Loader`` during initialization. See
:ref:`ref-templates-api`.

.. setting:: TEMPLATE_STRING_IF_INVALID

TEMPLATE_STRING_IF_INVALID
--------------------------

Default: ``''`` (Empty string)

Output, as a string, that the template system should use for invalid (e.g.
misspelled) variables. See :ref:`invalid-template-variables`..

.. setting:: TEST_DATABASE_CHARSET

TEST_DATABASE_CHARSET
---------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``None``

The character set encoding used to create the test database. The value of this
string is passed directly through to the database, so its format is
backend-specific.

Supported for the PostgreSQL_ (``postgresql``, ``postgresql_psycopg2``) and MySQL_ (``mysql``) backends.

.. _PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/multibyte.html
.. _MySQL: http://www.mysql.org/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset-database.html

.. setting:: TEST_DATABASE_COLLATION

TEST_DATABASE_COLLATION
------------------------

.. versionadded:: 1.0

Default: ``None``

The collation order to use when creating the test database. This value is
passed directly to the backend, so its format is backend-specific.

Only supported for the ``mysql`` backend (see `section 10.3.2`_ of the MySQL
manual for details).

.. _section 10.3.2: http://www.mysql.org/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset-database.html

.. setting:: TEST_DATABASE_NAME

TEST_DATABASE_NAME
------------------

Default: ``None``

The name of database to use when running the test suite.

If the default value (``None``) is used with the SQLite database engine, the
tests will use a memory resident database. For all other database engines the
test database will use the name ``'test_' + settings.DATABASE_NAME``.

See :ref:`topics-testing`.

.. setting:: TEST_RUNNER

TEST_RUNNER
-----------

Default: ``'django.test.simple.run_tests'``

The name of the method to use for starting the test suite. See
:ref:`topics-testing`.

.. _Testing Django Applications: ../testing/

.. setting:: TIME_FORMAT

TIME_FORMAT
-----------

Default: ``'P'`` (e.g. ``4 p.m.``)

The default formatting to use for time fields on Django admin change-list
pages -- and, possibly, by other parts of the system. See
:ttag:`allowed date format strings <now>`.

See also ``DATE_FORMAT``, ``DATETIME_FORMAT``, ``TIME_FORMAT``,
``YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT`` and ``MONTH_DAY_FORMAT``.

.. setting:: TIME_ZONE

TIME_ZONE
---------

Default: ``'America/Chicago'``

A string representing the time zone for this installation. `See available choices`_.
(Note that list of available choices lists more than one on the same line;
you'll want to use just one of the choices for a given time zone. For instance,
one line says ``'Europe/London GB GB-Eire'``, but you should use the first bit
of that -- ``'Europe/London'`` -- as your ``TIME_ZONE`` setting.)

Note that this is the time zone to which Django will convert all dates/times --
not necessarily the timezone of the server. For example, one server may serve
multiple Django-powered sites, each with a separate time-zone setting.

Normally, Django sets the ``os.environ['TZ']`` variable to the time zone you
specify in the ``TIME_ZONE`` setting. Thus, all your views and models will
automatically operate in the correct time zone. However, if you're manually
:ref:`manually configuring settings
<settings-without-django-settings-module>`, Django will *not* touch the ``TZ``
environment variable, and it'll be up to you to ensure your processes are
running in the correct environment.

.. note::
    Django cannot reliably use alternate time zones in a Windows environment.
    If you're running Django on Windows, this variable must be set to match the
    system timezone.

.. _See available choices: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/datetime-keywords.html#DATETIME-TIMEZONE-SET-TABLE

.. setting:: URL_VALIDATOR_USER_AGENT

URL_VALIDATOR_USER_AGENT
------------------------

Default: ``Django/<version> (http://www.djangoproject.com/)``

The string to use as the ``User-Agent`` header when checking to see if URLs
exist (see the ``verify_exists`` option on :class:`~django.db.models.URLField`).

.. setting:: USE_ETAGS

USE_ETAGS
---------

Default: ``False``

A boolean that specifies whether to output the "Etag" header. This saves
bandwidth but slows down performance. This is only used if ``CommonMiddleware``
is installed (see :ref:`topics-http-middleware`).

.. setting:: USE_I18N

USE_I18N
--------

Default: ``True``

A boolean that specifies whether Django's internationalization system should be
enabled. This provides an easy way to turn it off, for performance. If this is
set to ``False``, Django will make some optimizations so as not to load the
internationalization machinery.

.. setting:: YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT

YEAR_MONTH_FORMAT
-----------------

Default: ``'F Y'``

The default formatting to use for date fields on Django admin change-list
pages -- and, possibly, by other parts of the system -- in cases when only the
year and month are displayed.

For example, when a Django admin change-list page is being filtered by a date
drilldown, the header for a given month displays the month and the year.
Different locales have different formats. For example, U.S. English would say
"January 2006," whereas another locale might say "2006/January."

See :ttag:`allowed date format strings <now>`. See also ``DATE_FORMAT``,
``DATETIME_FORMAT``, ``TIME_FORMAT`` and ``MONTH_DAY_FORMAT``.