The right place to keep my signals.py file in a Django project

Question

Based on Django's documentation I was reading, it seems like signals.py in the app folder is a good place to start with, but the problem I'm facing is that when I create signals for pre_save and I try to import the class from model it conflicts with the import in my model.

# models.py

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import gettext as _
from signals import *

class Comm_Queue(CommunicatorAbstract):
    queue_statuses = (
        ('P', _('Pending')),
        ('S', _('Sent')),
        ('E', _('Error')),
        ('R', _('Rejected')),
    )
    status          = models.CharField(max_length=10, db_index=True, default='P')
    is_html         = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    language        = models.CharField(max_length=6, choices=settings.LANGUAGES)
    sender_email    = models.EmailField()
    recipient_email = models.EmailField()
    subject         = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    content         = models.TextField()

---

# signals.py

from django.conf import settings
from django.db.models.signals import pre_save
from django.dispatch import receiver
from models import Comm_Queue

@receiver(pre_save, sender=Comm_Queue)
def get_sender_email_from_settings(sender, **kwargs):
    obj=kwargs['instance']
    if not obj.sender_email:
        obj.sender_email='%s' % settings.ADMINS[0][1]

This code will not run because I import Comm_Queue inside signals.py and I also import the signals inside models.py.

Can anyone advice on how I could over come this issue?

Regards

Answer 1

If you're using Django<=1.6 I'd recommend Kamagatos solution: just import your signals at the end of your models module.

For future versions of Django (>=1.7), the recommended way is to import your signals module in your app's config ready() function:

my_app/apps.py

from django.apps import AppConfig

class MyAppConfig(AppConfig):
    name = 'my_app'

    def ready(self):
        import my_app.signals

my_app/__init__.py

default_app_config = 'my_app.apps.MyAppConfig'