In Django, what is the difference between running "python manage.py shell" or just "python"?

Question

In the context of Django, both python manage.py shell and python can start a Python interpreter. What is the difference between these commands?

Answer 1

Directly typing python, just starts the interpreter.

Using manage.py within a django project sets the environment so that you can interact with your project objects in the shell. As noted here:

We’re using this instead of simply typing “python”, because manage.py sets the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable, which gives Django the Python import path to your mysite/settings.py file.