Below is a simple method to use a Django project inside Jupyter’s standard running (ie jupyter notebook) instead of using a Django-managed jupyter server (ie python manage.py shell_plus --notebook).

It’s true packages exist to make it “easy” to use Django inside of a Jupyter notebook. I seem to always run into issues successfully running these packages. I’ve found the below method useful although I cannot recall how I discovered how this works (aka attribution needed).

In the long run, use this gist as I’ll be able the code there up to date.

django_for_jupyter.py

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import os, sys
PWD = os.getenv('PWD')

PROJ_MISSING_MSG = """Set an enviroment variable:\n
`DJANGO_PROJECT=your_project_name`\n
or call:\n
`init_django(your_project_name)`
"""

def init_django(project_name=None):
    os.chdir(PWD)
    project_name = project_name or os.environ.get('DJANGO_PROJECT') or None
    if project_name == None:
        raise Exception(PROJ_MISSING_MSG)
    sys.path.insert(0, os.getenv('PWD'))
    os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', f'{project_name}.settings')
    os.environ["DJANGO_ALLOW_ASYNC_UNSAFE"] = "true"
    import django
    django.setup()

Requirements

• Virtual Environment (virtualenv, venv, pipenv, etc)
• Django installed & project created (we’ll use the project name cfehome)
• Jupyter installed at least in the virtual environment

#django