Django-debug-toolbar: ImproperlyConfigured: The included urlconf project.urls doesn't have any patterns in it (via patch_root_urlconf)

Does the "explicit setup" described in the documentation work for you?

@aaugustin yes.

Which means you're seeing the documented behavior... I don't know how to improve this.

Let me know if you find a way around the circular import (send a pull request).

For anyone else that runs into this adding the setting

DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PATCH_SETTINGS = False

fixed it for me

Yes, but that's not enough, you also have to set up the Debug Toolbar explicitly.

In short: read the docs ;-)

For what it's worth, I recently upgraded my MacBook Air to Mavericks and then rebuilt my virtual environment (with Django 1.5.1) and encountered this same "the included urlconf ... doesn’t have any patterns in it." error when I ran my nose tests. My screen was a sea of "F"s. But setting up the Debug Toolbar explicitly as aaugustin suggested solved the problem and all 232 of my tests now pass.

When you re-installed your environment, you got the latest version.

You might want to pin your dependencies ;-)

@aaugustin
Please consider re-opening it:

The error should be handled better, e.g. by catching ImproperlyConfigured and stating that the patching failed and how to resolve it (manual patching).

Currently it's very confusing, especially when it only happens when using the Django wsgi app, but not with "runserver".

FWIW here is a traceback, where debug_toolbar does not even appear (but toggling DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PATCH_SETTING triggered it):

ERROR django.request: Internal Server Error: /
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "…/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 139, in get_response
    response = response.render()
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/response.py", line 105, in render
    self.content = self.rendered_content
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/response.py", line 82, in rendered_content
    content = template.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 140, in render
    return self._render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/test/utils.py", line 85, in instrumented_test_render
    return self.nodelist.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 840, in render
    bit = self.render_node(node, context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 854, in render_node
    return node.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/loader_tags.py", line 123, in render
    return compiled_parent._render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/test/utils.py", line 85, in instrumented_test_render
    return self.nodelist.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 840, in render
    bit = self.render_node(node, context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 854, in render_node
    return node.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/classytags/core.py", line 106, in render
    return self.render_tag(context, **kwargs)
  File "…/site-packages/sekizai/templatetags/sekizai_tags.py", line 76, in render_tag
    rendered_contents = nodelist.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 840, in render
    bit = self.render_node(node, context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 854, in render_node
    return node.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 305, in render
    return nodelist.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 840, in render
    bit = self.render_node(node, context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 854, in render_node
    return node.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 305, in render
    return nodelist.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 840, in render
    bit = self.render_node(node, context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 854, in render_node
    return node.render(context)
  File "…/site-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 433, in render
    url = reverse(view_name, args=args, kwargs=kwargs, current_app=context.current_app)
  File "…/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 480, in reverse
    app_list = resolver.app_dict[ns]
  File "…/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 310, in app_dict
    self._populate()
  File "…/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 262, in _populate
    for pattern in reversed(self.url_patterns):
  File "…/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 350, in url_patterns
    raise ImproperlyConfigured("The included urlconf %s doesn't have any patterns in it" % self.urlconf_name)
ImproperlyConfigured: The included urlconf config.urls doesn't have any patterns in it

I suppose that Django 1.7 makes it easier to prevent this, but for 1.6 at least the error should be more descriptive.

As a workaround I can manually import "mainapp.admin" to prevent this circular import.

I've spent way too much unpaid time attempting to fix this.

Feel free to submit a pull request.

Hi!
Try this:

try:
    if sys.argv[1] == 'runserver' or sys.argv[1] == 'runserver_plus':
        DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PATCH_SETTINGS = DEBUG
    else:
        DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PATCH_SETTINGS = False
except IndexError:
        DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PATCH_SETTINGS = False

@titovanton it works.

The normal runserver works well in my case. I do not get this error, but when I change to server the website using uwsgi, I get this error.

Disabling debug toolbar it helps. I do not get any error, but this is not what I want. I want to run debug toolbar with.

I have tried individually with just DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PATCH_SETTINGS = DEBUG or DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PATCH_SETTINGS = False, but still the error happens.

Any further insight on this?

@mocha384 https://github.com/titovanton/bicycle-factory/blob/master/project_template/mainapp/settings/debug_toolbar.py
and do not forget to reload uwsgi, I use https://github.com/titovanton/bicycle-factory/blob/master/templates/uwsgi.ini#L10 for this purposes

@mocha384 also, if u have 30 sec page loads(when debug-toolbar is on), then the problem is django template system: some of the blocks or tags works 2 slow, for example: sorl-thumbnails (with Pillow backend). I cache this parts of templates code. To finde the bottleneck, disable all extra panels, unless 'template_timings_panel.panels.TemplateTimings.TemplateTimings', and relations...

@titovanton thank you for the reply. let me try with your suggestion.

@titovanton
My apology for late reply. I have checked your solution.
DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PATCH_SETTINGS = False along with explicit setup of DT fixed most of the issues related.

How annoying this 'bug' Now I have to add an extra debug setting to my production urls.py or create another extra file