Cannot find Informix sqlhosts at None

[AcckiyGerman]

Error: Cannot find Informix sqlhosts at None

.../lib/python3.6/site-packages/django_informixdb/base.py in get_connection_params, line 192

Environment:

• Ubuntu 16.04.02
• Apache 2.4.18
• mod_wsgi 4.6.5
• Django 2.1.3
• Python 3.6.7
• $INFORMIXSQLHOSTS is Set
• sqlhosts file is correct.

Analysis

Connection to Informix works, when project hosted by django dev server: ./manage.py runserver; but under Apache it doesn't.

My Idea is that Apache runs the project in a separate thread, hiding the host env.vars for the security purposes, so django_informixdb can't reach $INFORMIXSQLHOSTS

Possible solutions:

• Set path to sqlhosts file in the django.settings.DATABASES

Generally I think that all the variables for django_informixdb should be in django.settings.DATABASES, instead of getting them from environment.
In that case:

• information is explicitly described
• could be stored in git/svn/etc
• user could use different variables to connect for several Informix servers.
  • see Readme update: DB_LOCALE env & its explanation. #6 , where I had to set $DB_LOCALE, which could be different for each DB.
• easier to deploy project in different platforms (docker, windows, RHAT, etc) where environment vars are managed in a different ways

If the developer wants to be more flexible and use envars instead of hardcoding, he could use os.environ:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        ...
        'OPTIONS': {
             'DRIVER': os.path.join(os.environ['INFORMIXBIN'], 'lib/iclit09b.so'),
             'INFORMIXSQLHOSTS': os.environ['INFORMIXSQLHOSTS'],
             'DB_LOCALE': os.environ['DB_LOCALE']

        }
    }
}

But information is still explicit and anybody could understand, where is it taken from.

[AcckiyGerman]

ATM I've fixed issue locally by adding

# fix connection to Informix odbc:
os.environ['INFORMIXSQLHOSTS'] = '/usr/informix/etc/sqlhosts'
os.environ['DB_LOCALE'] = 'de_DE.8859-15'

DATABASES = { ...

in my settings.py file, but it is a non-obvious workaround, not a clean solution.