How to fix "AttributeError: 'Settings' object has no attribute 'ROOT_URLCONF'"

Question

I have a coding interview tomorrow (my first ever! Super excited/nervous) and am working to bring an old project of mine back to life and updated: a producthunt clone built in Django/Python.

Everything used to run fine with it and now, after git cloning it into a ubuntu virtualbox and bringing things up to date in its virtualenv, I'm stuck with the following error and have come up empty handed after hours of troubleshooting and researching similar issues on stackoverflow. Any help is appreciated.

The error: 'AttributeError: 'Settings' object has no attribute 'ROOT_URLCONF''

Settings and output:

settings.py

"""
Django settings for producthunt project.

Generated by 'django-admin startproject' using Django 1.10.5.

For more information on this file, see
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/topics/settings/

For the full list of settings and their values, see
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/ref/settings/
"""
# SECURITY WARNING: keep the secret key used in production secret!
SECRET_KEY = '@(b=ndac@9k%w#y7(h5p!^a!)6y_p2&oln@lsz6x61=wyusg4('

import os
import django
django.setup()

# Build paths inside the project like this: os.path.join(BASE_DIR, ...)
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))

# Quick-start development settings - unsuitable for production
# See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/howto/deployment/checklist/

# SECURITY WARNING: don't run with debug turned on in production!
DEBUG = True

ROOT_URLCONF = 'producthunt.urls'

ALLOWED_HOSTS = []

# Application definition

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'compressor',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django_comments',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'bootstrap4',
    'producthunt',
    'links',
    'registration',
]

# Login/out settings - plus import above
from django.urls import reverse

LOGIN_URL=reverse('login')
LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = reverse('home')

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
]


TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

WSGI_APPLICATION = 'producthunt.wsgi.application'

# Database
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/ref/settings/#databases

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
    }
}

SITE_ID = 1

# Password validation
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/ref/settings/#auth-password-validators

AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS = [
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.UserAttributeSimilarityValidator',
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.MinimumLengthValidator',
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.CommonPasswordValidator',
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.NumericPasswordValidator',
    },
]


# Internationalization
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/topics/i18n/

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us'

TIME_ZONE = 'UTC'

USE_I18N = True

USE_L10N = True

USE_TZ = True

COMPRESS_ENABLED = True


# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/howto/static-files/

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = 'static'
MEDIA_ROOT = 'media'
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'

STATICFILES_FINDERS = (
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
    'compressor.finders.CompressorFinder',
)

COMPRESS_PRECOMPILERS = (
    ('text/x-scss', 'django_libsass.SassCompiler'),
)

urls.py:

"""producthunt URL Configuration

The `urlpatterns` list routes URLs to views. For more information please see:
    https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/topics/http/urls/
Examples:
Function views
    1. Add an import:  from my_app import views
    2. Add a URL to urlpatterns:  url(r'^$', views.home, name='home')
Class-based views
    1. Add an import:  from other_app.views import Home
    2. Add a URL to urlpatterns:  url(r'^$', Home.as_view(), name='home')
Including another URLconf
    1. Import the include() function: from django.conf.urls import url, include
    2. Add a URL to urlpatterns:  url(r'^blog/', include('blog.urls'))
"""
from django.conf.urls import url, include
from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth import views as auth_views
from links.views import LinkListView
from links.views import UserProfileDetailView
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required as auth # Keep non-users out
from links.views import UserProfileEditView
from links.views import LinkCreateView, LinkDetailView
from links.views import LinkEditView
from links.views import LinkDeleteView

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^admin/', admin.site.urls),
    url(r'^$', LinkListView.as_view(), name='home'),
    url(r'^login/$', auth_views.login, name='login'),
    url(r'^logout/$', auth_views.logout, name='logout'),
    url(r'^accounts/', include('registration.backends.simple.urls')),
    url(r'^users/(?P<slug>\w+)/$', UserProfileDetailView.as_view(),name='profile'),
    url(r'^edit_profile/$', auth(UserProfileEditView.as_view()), name='edit_profile'),
    url(r'^link/submit/$', auth(LinkCreateView.as_view()), name='link_submit'),
    url(r'^link/(?P<pk>\d+)/$', LinkDetailView.as_view(), name='link_detail'),
    url(r'^link/edit/(?P<pk>\d+)/$', auth(LinkEditView.as_view()), name='link_edit'),
    url(r'^link/delete/(?P<pk>\d+)/$', auth(LinkDeleteView.as_view()), name='link_delete'),
    url(r'^comments/', include('django_comments.urls')),
]

Full terminal output:

(producthunt) ubuntu@ubuntu-VirtualBox:~/Documents/Github/producthunt$ python manage.py runserver
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "manage.py", line 22, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 381, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 325, in execute
    settings.INSTALLED_APPS
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 79, in __getattr__
    self._setup(name)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 66, in _setup
    self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 157, in __init__
    mod = importlib.import_module(self.SETTINGS_MODULE)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 994, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 971, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 955, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 665, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 678, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 219, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "/home/ubuntu/Documents/Github/producthunt/producthunt/settings.py", line 53, in <module>
    LOGIN_URL=reverse('login')
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/django/urls/base.py", line 30, in reverse
    resolver = get_resolver(urlconf)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/django/urls/resolvers.py", line 68, in get_resolver
    urlconf = settings.ROOT_URLCONF
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 80, in __getattr__
    val = getattr(self._wrapped, name)
AttributeError: 'Settings' object has no attribute 'ROOT_URLCONF'

Answer 1

SOLVED. There were a few things wrong. Since upgrading the django install from like 1.10 to 2.2, there were a lot of changes. Including URL referencing (ie. django.conf.urls vs django.urls) and having to re-run requirements.txt to make sure everything was installed and updated correctly.