[Fixed]-Django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: The SECRET_KEY setting must not be empty

by

31👍

✅

Just like the error says, you have no SECRET_KEY defined. You need to add one to your settings.py.

Django will refuse to start if SECRET_KEY is not set.

You can read more about this setting in the docs.

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.

👤rnevius

7👍

SECRET_KEY variable in settings.py should be kept secret

You can place the string secret key generated with the get_random_stringfunction above (as said @rnevius ) in settings.py but use a function that get the variable.

This means, that for security reasons, it is better to hide the content of SECRET_KEY variable.

You can define an environment variable as follow:

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.

Also you can protect the secret content variables of the project in this way.

👤bgarcial

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