Exception("DATABASE_URL environment variable not defined") When running local server

👋 @43e88fede83e446f9e392debd41d3c

Giving that tutorial a quick read over, it looks like you’ll need to set an environment variable to indicate that you’re in a development environment.

So in your dev env, set DEVELOPMENT_MODE=true.

This way the code will use a sqlite db instead of looking for a postgres instance, snippet from the tutorial:

if DEVELOPMENT_MODE is True:
    DATABASES = {
        "default": {
            "ENGINE": "django.db.backends.sqlite3",
            "NAME": os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "db.sqlite3"),
        }
    }

The dev env defaults to being disabled just above the snippet above:

# Database
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/ref/settings/#databases
DEVELOPMENT_MODE = os.getenv("DEVELOPMENT_MODE", "False") == "True"