How to do it...

1. If you just have one or two settings, you can use the following pattern in your models.py file. If the settings are extensive and you want to have them organized better, create an app_settings.py file in the app and put the settings in the following way:

# magazine/models.py or magazine/app_settings.py
from django.conf import settings
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
 
SETTING1 = getattr(settings, "MAGAZINE_SETTING1", "default value")
MEANING_OF_LIFE = getattr(settings, "MAGAZINE_MEANING_OF_LIFE", 42)
STATUS_CHOICES = getattr(settings, "MAGAZINE_STATUS_CHOICES", (
    ("draft", _("Draft")),
    ("published", _("Published")),
    ("not_listed", _("Not Listed")),
))

1. If the settings were defined in an app_settings.py file, then you can import and use them in models.py, as follows:

# magazine/models.py
from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

from .app_settings import STATUS_CHOICES


class NewsArticle(models.Model):
    # ...
    status = models.CharField(_("Status"),
                              max_length=20,
                              choices=STATUS_CHOICES)

1. If you want to overwrite the STATUS_CHOICES setting for a given project, you simply open settings.py for that project and add the following:

# settings.py
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

# ...

MAGAZINE_STATUS_CHOICES = (
    ("imported", _("Imported")),
    ("draft", _("Draft")),
    ("published", _("Published")),
    ("not_listed", _("Not Listed")),
    ("expired", _("Expired")),
)