Django error in Heroku: “Please supply the ENGINE value”

Question

I read and apply \"Getting started with Django on Heroku\" tutorial but ran into problem while syncing db:

raise ImproperlyConfigured(\"settings.DATABASES is         


        

Answer 1

After trying all the answers here and verifying DATABASE_URL exists, nothing worked.

I added the second line and it worked

DATABASES['default'] = dj_database_url.config() <--- heroko docs says this is enough
DATABASES['default']['ENGINE'] = 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2' <---- add this

Answer 2

it is a little late ; but you just delete all default django database settings lines ; and add heroku's one.

it will work correctly

** edit ** or simply you can use `socket.gethostname().

example :

if socket.gethostname() == 'xx':
    DATABASE_SETTINGS ={ }

elif socket.gethostname() == 'xxx':
    another database settings...

so you can run your project under multiple hosts.

Answer 3

Try different order:

heroku run python manage.py syncdb --settings=moz455.settings

The manage.py command looks like this:

manage.py <command> <options>

but you used it like this:

manage.py <options> <command>

Your other problem (lack of ENGINE setting) may be caused by incorrect settings file being used during the syncdb command execution. The above should fix it also.

Answer 4

Solved it myself: in manage.py add code similar to this:

CurDir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
ProjectDir = os.path.join(CurDir, "moz455")
sys.path += [ProjectDir]

And commit changes with these commands:

git add -A
git commit -m "commit"
git push -f heroku

Answer 5

I ran into the same issue, but apparently for different reasons. In the Heroku docs at https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/django#prerequisites, it says to add the following to settings.py:

DATABASES['default'] =  dj_database_url.config()

You can pass in a parameter of:

DATABASES['default'] =  dj_database_url.config(default='postgres://user:pass@localhost/dbname')

And that will allow you to develop locally and on Heroku. The part that actually SOLVES the problem I had though was that the Heroku config environment variable of DATABASE_URL was not actually set. To set this, I ran

$ heroku config

I saw the Database URL assigned to a separate config variable. So I created a new variable:

$ heroko config:add DATABASE_URL={#the database url}

That solved my problem. I hope it helps anyone else with similar issues.

Answer 6

Ensure that you have the database add-on installed and setup properly. See https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/database#no-dev-database-or-no-database-url

I ran the following to fix the issue:

heroku addons:add heroku-postgresql
heroku pg:promote HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_CYAN