Access directly to Heroku app DBs from your shell

local_settings_helper.py

# This snippet requires dj_database_url (https://github.com/kennethreitz/dj-database-url)

class HerokuDatabaseWrapper(dict):

    def get_config_for_app(self, name):
        from subprocess import check_output
        d = {}
        output = check_output('heroku config -a'.split() + [name, ])
        for line in output.split('\n'):
            if ':' not in line:
                continue
            key, val = map(lambda s: s.strip(), line.split(':', 1))
            d[key] = val
        return d

    def get_config(self, name):
        import dj_database_url
        db_url = self.get_config_for_app(name)['DATABASE_URL']
        return dj_database_url.parse(db_url)

    def __getitem__(self, name):
        if name not in self:
            self[name] = self.get_config(name)
        return dict.__getitem__(self, name)

# Define databases like this in your settings.py
      
DATABASES = HerokuDatabaseWrapper({
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        # Add 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'.
        'NAME': 'project',  # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
        'USER': 'postgres',  # Not used with sqlite3.
        'PASSWORD': '',  # Not used with sqlite3.
        'HOST': '',  # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3.
        'PORT': '',  # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3.
    },
})