I meant to write about the Django Debug Toolbar before but other things kept getting on the way. Basically, if you work with Django then you’ll appreciate this “configurable set of panels that display various debug information about the current request/response and when clicked, display more details about the panel’s content.”

[caption id=“attachment_875” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Django Debug Toobar”][/caption]

Imagine working on your application and being able to get a list of all of its settings, HTTP headers, display GET/POST/cookie/session variables, templates and context used and their template paths, SQL queries including time to execute and links to EXPLAIN each query, list of signals, their arguments and receivers,… want more? There is also the super nifty debugsqlshell command that outputs the sql statements that gets executed when you work with your models in the Python interactive shell.

Now, usually when adding django modules, one has to read through README or INSTALL files to understand what needs to g0 and where. But this time you’re in for a treat as the developer has taken the time to distill the steps needed to get the Django Debug Toolbar working with your application so that you can spend less time reading documentation and more time hacking. Simply modify your existing settings.py to include the following 3 lines:

It is that easy! Make sure to read up on all the possible tweaks you can make with it and let the developer know what you think of this awesome tool!