Using django ORM in a non-django project

One of my latest project is split in 2 interconnected parts, one is using django framework for web interface and the other is third application scecific. And I thought of using django ORM in latter part to keep things simple and not to break anything in database. Quick lookup on internet gave me nothing, so I digged into it and found out that the only thing a script/application needs to use django ORM is DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE enviroment variable set. So here comes the solution:

import os

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'myproject.settings'
 

from myproject.campaign.models import Campaign, List

The important thing here is not to try to import anything django-specific before actually setting enviroment variable. After that you will be able to use django ORM in your non-django project.