How to keep all my django applications in specific folder

Question

I have a Django project, let\'s say \"project1\". Typical folder structure for applications is:

/project1/
         /app1/
         /app2/
         ...
             


        

Answer 1

As a slight variant to Berhard Vallant's or Anshuman's answers, here is an alternative snippet to place in settings.py

import os
import sys  # Insert this line

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))

# Insert the two lines below
APPS_DIR = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, '<your_project_dir_name>/apps/')
sys.path.insert(0, APPS_DIR)

Doing it in this way has the added benefit that your template directories are cleaner as they will look like below. Without the APPS_DIR variable, there will be a lot of repitition of <your_project_dir_name>/apps/ within the DIRS list of the TEMPLATES list.

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [
            os.path.join(APPS_DIR, '<app_name>/templates/<app_name>'),
            os.path.join(APPS_DIR, '<app_name>/templates/<app_name>'),
            ...
        ],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

You can list the apps within the INSTALLED_APPS list as normal with either the short-form name given in apps.py or by using the long-form syntax of appname.apps.AppnameConfig replacing appname with your app's name.