How can I tell whether my Django application is running on development server or not?

Question

How can I be certain that my application is running on development server or not? I suppose I could check value of settings.DEBUG and assume if DEBUG

Answer 1

Typically I set a variable called environment and set it to "DEVELOPMENT", "STAGING" or "PRODUCTION". Within the settings file I can then add basic logic to change which settings are being used, based on environment.

EDIT: Additionally, you can simply use this logic to include different settings.py files that override the base settings. For example:

if environment == "DEBUG":
    from debugsettings import *