Split views.py in several files

Solution 1:

In Django everything is a Python module (*.py). You can create a view folder with an __init__.py inside and you still will be able to import your views, because this also implements a Python module. But an example would be better.

Your original views.py might look like this :

def view1(arg):
    pass

def view2(arg):
   pass

With the following folder/file structure it will work the same :

views/
   __init__.py
   viewsa.py
   viewsb.py

viewsa.py :

def view1(arg):
    pass

viewsb.py :

def view2(arg):
    pass

__init__.py :

from viewsa import view1
from viewsb import view2

The quick explanation would be: when you write from views import view1 Python will look for view1 in

1. views.py, which is what happens in the first (original) case

2. views/__init__.py, which is what happens in the second case. Here, __init__.py is able to provide the view1 method because it imports it.

With this kind of solution, you might have no need to change import or urlpatterns arguments in urls.py

If you have many methods in each new view file, you might find it useful to make the imports in views/__init__.py use *, like this:

from viewsa import *
from viewsb import *

I actually don't know about speed issues (but I doubt there are any).

For Models it might be a bit difficult.

Solution 2:

I've had to do this before (for clarities sake)

The way I did this was to create a views directory, then, in that, create a file called __init__.py

Now, when you're calling in your urls.py, you simply need to add another part

For example, previously, you may have called:-

url(r'^calendar/(?P<year>\d\d\d\d)/$', 'myproject.calendar.views.year')
url(r'^calendar/(?P<year>\d\d\d\d)/(?P<user>[a-z]+)/$', 'myproject.calendar.views.year_by_user')

You can now call something along the lines of

url(r'^calendar/(?P<year>\d\d\d\d)/$', 'myproject.calendar.views.year.index')
url(r'^calendar/(?P<year>\d\d\d\d)/(?P<user>[a-z]+)/$', 'myproject.calendar.views.year.user')

This is, of course, assuming that you had views/year.py containing the functions index and user ;)

Solution 3:

Just for sharing, I had a bit of issues with Vincent Demeester's answer. Everything is fine except in init.py file, I have to write in this way:

__init__.py:

from .viewsa import *
from .viewsb import *

This way I still don't need to change my import method in urls.py. I am on Python 3.6.1 and Django 1.11.4.

Solution 4:

Basically, you can put your code, whereever you wish. Just make sure, you change the import statements accordingly, e.g. for the views in the urls.py.

Not knowing your actual code its hard to suggest something meaningful. Maybe you can use some kind of filename prefix, e.g. views_helper.py, views_fancy.py, views_that_are_not_so_often_used.py or so ...

Another option would be to create a views directory with an __init__.py, where you import all subviews. If you have a need for a large number of files, you can create more nested subviews as your views grow ...