How to Connect Django to MySQL: A Complete Step‑by‑Step Guide
This tutorial walks through configuring a Django project to use MySQL instead of the default SQLite, covering database creation, settings adjustments, required package installation, migrations, and a complete example with URLs, views, templates, and server startup.
Introduction
This article briefly explains how to connect Django to MySQL.
By default Django uses SQLite, which is convenient for quick testing but can cause obscure issues in production, so configuring MySQL early is recommended.
Connecting to MySQL
Django connects to MySQL in three steps:
Create the MySQL database in advance.
Modify settings.py to use the MySQL engine.
Update the project’s __init__.py to use pymysql as MySQLdb.
1. Create MySQL database
Example: a database named school on the local MySQL server.
2. Edit settings.py
Replace the default SQLite configuration with the following:
DATABASES = {
'default': {
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql', # default
'NAME': 'school', # database name
'HOST': '127.0.0.1', # MySQL IP
'PORT': 3306, # MySQL port
'USER': 'root', # username
'PASSWORD': 'rootroot' # password
}
}3. Edit __init__.py
Install pymysql if not present and add:
import pymysql
pymysql.install_as_MySQLdb()Install with pip install pymysql if needed.
Migrate Database
After configuration, create a demo app to test:
Create an app: python manage.py startapp web Add the app to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py.
Run migrations: python manage.py makemigrations and python manage.py migrate.
Display Content
The demo consists of four parts:
Define URLs in urls.py.
Write the view in web/views.py.
Create the template templates/student.html.
Start the server with python manage.py runserver 127.0.0.1:8000 and visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/student_list.
URL configuration example:
urlpatterns = [
path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
path('student_list', views.student_list),
]View example:
def student_list(request):
student_queryset = models.Student.objects.all()
return render(request, "student.html", {"student_queryset": student_queryset})Template example (simplified):
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Student List</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1">
<thead>
<tr><td>id</td><td>姓名</td><td>年龄</td><td>性别</td><td>年纪</td></tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
{% for student in student_queryset %}
<tr>
<td>{{ student.id }}</td>
<td>{{ student.name }}</td>
<td>{{ student.age }}</td>
<td>{{ student.gender }}</td>
<td>{{ student.grade }}</td>
</tr>
{% endfor %}
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>Run server command:
python manage.py runserver 127.0.0.1:8000Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/student_list to see the rendered table.
Conclusion
The article demonstrates how to connect Django to MySQL and provides a small demo showing the full workflow from configuration to a running web page. It notes that pymysql version 0.9.2 and Django 2.1.5 were used.
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