pylint-django is a Pylint plugin for improving code analysis for when analysing code using Django. It is also used by the Prospector tool.

Ensure pylint-django is installed and on your path (pip install pylint-django), and then run pylint:

pylint --load-plugins pylint_django [..other options..]

If you have prospector installed, then pylint-django will already be installed as a dependency, and will be activated automatically if Django is detected.

prospector [..other options..]

• Prevents warnings about Django-generated attributes such as Model.objects or Views.request.
• Prevents warnings when using ForeignKey attributes ("Instance of ForeignKey has no member").
• Fixes pylint's knowledge of the types of Model and Form field attributes
• Validates Model.__unicode__ methods.
• Meta informational classes on forms and models do not generate errors.

Please feel free to add your name to the CONTRIBUTORS.md file if you want to be credited when pull requests get merged. You can also add to the CHANGELOG.md file if you wish, although I'll also do that when merging if not.

The structure of the test package follows that from pylint itself.

It is fairly simple: create a module starting with func_ followed by a test name, and insert into it some code. The tests will run pylint against these modules. If the idea is that no messages now occur, then that is fine, just check to see if it works by running scripts/test.sh.

Ideally, add some pylint error suppression messages to the file to prevent spurious warnings, since these are all tiny little modules not designed to do anything so there's no need to be perfect.

It is possible to make tests with expected error output, for example, if adding a new message or simply accepting that pylint is supposed to warn. the messages directory contains a list of files which should match the name of the test and contain error type, line number, class and expected text. These are useful to quickly add "expected messages".

pylint-django is available under the GPLv2 license.