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I'm trying to make MongoDB and Django get on with each other the way I want them to. That's the error I'm getting when trying to import viewsets from rest_framework_mongoengine.

The whole error looks like this:

ImproperlyConfigured: Requested setting INSTALLED_APPS, but settings are not configured. You must either define the environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE or call settings.configure() before accessing settings.

It doesn't find settings.py or what? If so I can't figure out why! Namely, say, why did this problem not appear with other modules then?

Here are my INSTALLED APPS

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'rest_framework',
    'rest_framework_mongoengine',
    'mongoengine.django.mongo_auth',
    'rest_framework.authtoken',
    'corsheaders',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'django_extensions',
    'core',
    'core.essences.user',
    'core.essences.user.authentication',
    'core.essences.test_result',
Most common cause of this is that you're just running python instead of using python manage.py shell, which means you need to manually set the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable so Django knows where to find your settings (manage.py shell does that for you automatically).
It's also possible (but less common) that you have something that's trying to import settings during the process of setting up your settings. To determine if that's the case, look at your settings file for any imports or function calls that might need to access settings (including code in things being imported by your settings file).
For anyone still experiencing this issue with little resolve, Ensure the setdefault DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is moved to the top of the script file.
import os
import django
os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'my_crazy_service.settings')
django.setup()
from channels.auth import AuthMiddlewareStack
from channels.routing import ProtocolTypeRouter, URLRouter
from django.core.asgi import get_asgi_application
disregard the squiggly marks
                Worked! But now I need to do this for every single pytest file, as it was my pytest files that were demanding to know where the settings.py is. Anyone know how to do this globally, without having to use the shell?
– AdamJSim
                Jun 13, 2022 at 15:04
                I got this error when running django-channels with daphne. I imported all the wsgi details to my asgi file from your help, now it's working perfect thanks to you!
– Kushan Gunasekera
                May 30, 2019 at 3:03
set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE= <yourProjectName>.settings
(or) navigate to the folder containing settings file in terminal and run
set  DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=settings
                In the shell, in config.py or in command line? Doing this in the shell produces a syntax error, so I have no idea where people should put this set.
– ionecum
                Nov 10, 2021 at 16:39
I saw this exception in the python console in pycharm when I run the following command,
from app_name.models import model_name
by the soloution present above, before this command, I used below command and the problem is solved
from project_name.wsgi import *
        
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