Django development on OSX using emacs

I started following the Django tutorials by arun. I wanted to know about the related classes and quickly look into docs for the things that I code, I wanted an environment that is nice to newbies, helping with code completion and easy documentation lookup. I searched and found a huge list of options. Since I was begining with Django I wanted an environment that is much easier to setup, my first choice was pycharm, but unfortunately the community edition of pycharm doesn’t support Django - see this.

I decided to come back to my good old friend emacs and configure it for Django development. Again a search gave a huge list of resources on how to set it up, I found this gits more upto date and had what I was looking for, followed the steps there to install python, pip, Virtualenv and django with a simple correction, virtualenvwrapper.sh is located in /usr/local/bin/ instead of /usr/local/share/python/

Important thing is to add these line to .bash_profile

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
source /usr/local/bin/python/virtualenvwrapper.sh
export PIP_VIRTUALENV_BASE=$WORKON_HOME

I also didn’t installed postgres as given in the gist, Instead I prefer postgresapp

###Setup for autocompletion

Python side setup

Swtich to the virtual environment

workon <virtualenv>

For automatic code completion install jedi

pip install jedi

For jedi to communicate with emacs

pip install epc

Emacs side setup

#####Install virtualenvironmentwrapper.el and jedi.el from MELPA.

Add this config to ~/.emacs.d/init.el

(require 'virtualenvwrapper)
(venv-initialize-interactive-shells) ;; if you want interactive shell support
(venv-initialize-eshell) ;; if you want eshell support
(setq venv-location "Users/tutysara/.virtualenvs")

M-x venv-workon to activate the virtualenv containing Django and the other libraries to start developing. Detailed instructions on using virtualenvwrapper.el can be found on its github page and jedi.el also has its own set of well written docs

To test this setup open eshell and type which python it should show a path which is inside the virtualenvs dir ($HOME/.virtualenvs) for proper interpreter configuration and open a python file and type

    from django.db import models
    models.Te # it should autocomple on typing dot

to test autocompletion for Django.

We now have a emacs setup that can be used for Django development. There are other modes for working with templates which I will update when I install and use them.

Leave your comments on your favourite emacs setup for Django or even if you use something other than emacs too.