How to use DB router in Django 1.4

Question

I've been trying to setup Django 1.4.3 to use multiple DBs, but for the life of me I can't make it to work. I read the documentation and posts on SO, and did the following:

1) Add a second DB configuration in settings.py, as follows:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': '/tmp/django.db',
        'USER': '',
        'PASSWORD': '',
        'HOST': '',
        'PORT': '',
    },
    'db1' : {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'NAME': 'db1',
        'USER': 'fake',
        'PASSWORD': 'fake',
        'HOST': 'fake.host.com',
        'PORT': '3306',
    },
}

2) Create a routers.py and define a DB router as follows
(Note: According to SO posts, if you define a DB router in models.py, the router will not work)

class DBRouter(object):
    def db_for_read(self, model, **hints):
        return 'db1'

    def db_for_write(self, model, **hints):
        return 'db1'

    def allow_syncdb(self, db, model):
        return 'db1'

3) Add the following lines to settings.py
(Note: According to SO posts, these lines must be AFTER the DATABASES configurations

from django.db import connections
DATABASE_ROUTERS = ['fakeproject.routers.DBRouter',]

This was wrong. Do NOT put from django.db import connections here as it prevents the router to be registered

My symptoms:
Apparently, all my calls are routed through the default DB. Details below:

• Both DB settings work (I can perform manage.py indpectdb --database db1 successfully

• DATABASE_ROUTERS setting does not generate any complains (even if I put a wrong path to the DB router, or even a non-string object)

• When I attempt to access my objects via manage.py shell, I can do MyModel.objects.all() but when I actually try to iterate it, I'm told no such table. The default DB does not have that table, but 'db1' clearly has it as I generated the model by using inspectdb on it. As a proof, if I swap the DB configuration between db1 and default, I can access the object without problems.

Any help highly appreciated!

Answer 1

I found out that the statement in step 3 "from django.db import connections " was preventing the DB router to be registered. When I removed this statement, the router was registered and stuff started to work as expected.