Integrating Django with a legacy database

This document assumes you know the Django basics, as covered in the .

Once you’ve got Django set up, you’ll follow this general process to integrate with an existing database.

You’ll need to tell Django what your database connection parameters are, and what the name of the database is. Do that by editing the setting and assigning values to the following keys for the 'default' connection:

• USER
• PORT

Save this as a file by using standard Unix output redirection:

This feature is meant as a shortcut, not as definitive model generation. See the for more information.

Once you’ve cleaned up your models, name the file models.py and put it in the Python package that holds your app. Then add the app to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

If you do want to allow Django to manage the table’s lifecycle, you’ll need to change the option above to True (or remove it because True is its default value).

Next, run the command to install any extra needed database records such as admin permissions and content types:

Those are the basic steps – from here you’ll want to tweak the models Django generated until they work the way you’d like. Try accessing your data via the Django database API, and try editing objects via Django’s admin site, and edit the models file accordingly.