Cannot start any django app

Question

I am a newbie at Django and everytime I try to run python panel/manage.py startapp %app% (panel is my project) it gives me the error:

Error: \'         


        

Answer 1

I reproduced the issue and there's actually something not working as I expected. I wonder if we stumbled upon a Django's bug, or a limitation that I don't understand.

Having a project called "project" and an empty folder app/newapp …I tried:

python manage.py startapp newapp apps/newapp

It returns:

CommandError: 'newapp' conflicts with the name of an existing Python module and cannot be used as an app name. Please try another name.

But if I target ANY other route in which the last folder is not called the same name as the app I'm starting, it works.

So I ended up doing:

python manage.py startapp newapp apps/main

Using Django 2.1.3.

Answer 2

Perhaps you need to

cd panel
python manage.py startapp yourappname

I'm not sure running the command from a directory above your project will work properly.