“Models aren't loaded yet” error while populating in Django 1.8 or later

Question

I am using this code to populate my database:

import os
def populate():
    python_cat = add_cat(\'Python\')

    add_page(cat=python_cat, 
    title=\"Offic         


        

Answer 1

We were getting this error. Our project started with Django 1.4, we went to 1.5 and then to 1.7. Our wsgi.py looked like this:

import os
import sys

from django.core.handlers.wsgi import WSGIHandler

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'myapp.settings'
application = WSGIHandler()

When I updated to the 1.7 style WSGI handler:

import os
import sys

from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'myapp.settings'
application = get_wsgi_application()

Everything works now.

Answer 2

I had the same exception with Django 1.7rc2. The solution was to add these lines at the beginning of my program:

import django
django.setup()

Update: This is now documented for Django 1.8.

Answer 3

well for django 1.9.x :

populate_rango.py:

import os
import sys

from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'tango_with_django_project.settings'
application = get_wsgi_application()

def populate():
    python_cat = add_cat('Python')

    add_page(cat=python_cat,
         title="Official Python Tutorial",
         url="http://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/")

    add_page(cat=python_cat,
        title="How to Think like a Computer Scientist",
        url="http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/")

    add_page(cat=python_cat,
        title="Learn Python in 10 Minutes",
        url="http://www.korokithakis.net/tutorials/python/")

    django_cat = add_cat("Django")

    add_page(cat=django_cat,
        title="Official Django Tutorial",
        url="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/intro/tutorial01/")

    add_page(cat=django_cat,
        title="Django Rocks",
        url="http://www.djangorocks.com/")

    add_page(cat=django_cat,
        title="How to Tango with Django",
        url="http://www.tangowithdjango.com/")

    frame_cat = add_cat("Other Frameworks")

    add_page(cat=frame_cat,
        title="Bottle",
        url="http://bottlepy.org/docs/dev/")

    add_page(cat=frame_cat,
        title="Flask",
        url="http://flask.pocoo.org")

    #Print out what we have added to the user.
    for c in Category.objects.all():
        for p in Page.objects.filter(category=c):
            print ("- {0} - {1}".format(str(c), str(p)))

def add_page(cat, title, url, views=0):
    p = Page.objects.get_or_create(category=cat, title=title, url=url, views=views)[0]
    return p

def add_cat(name):
    c = Category.objects.get_or_create(name=name)[0]
    return c

# Start execution here!
if __name__ == '__main__':
    print ("Starting Rango population script...")
    os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'tango_with_django_project.settings')
    from rango.models import Category, Page
    populate()