Registry API Reference

The ConfigRegistry is an in-memory store that holds the entire configuration schema after Django starts up. It's populated by @register_config(...) decorators during autodiscovery and is read-only at runtime.

You rarely need to interact with the registry directly — the config accessor handles everything for normal use. But if you're building developer tooling, writing management commands, or creating custom extensions, direct registry access is available.

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Importing the registry

from django_sysconfig.registry import config_registry

This is the global singleton ConfigRegistry instance used by django-sysconfig internally.

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@register_config(app_label)

The decorator that registers a config class with the global registry. Used in your sysconfig.py files.

from django_sysconfig.registry import register_config, Section, Field

@register_config("myapp")
class MyAppConfig:
    class General(Section):
        label = "General"
        site_name = Field(StringFrontendModel, label="Site Name", default="My App")

Arguments:

Argument	Type	Description
app_label	str	The label under which this config is registered. Becomes the first segment of all paths in this config class.

The decorator runs at import time (when the sysconfig.py module is loaded during autodiscovery). It:

1. Introspects the decorated class for Section subclasses and their Field attributes.
2. Registers the resolved schema with config_registry.
3. Creates ConfigValue database rows for all fields that have a default (via get_or_create).

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Section

Base class for section definitions. Subclass it inside your config class to define a section.

from django_sysconfig.registry import Section

class General(Section):
    label = "General Settings"
    sort_order = 10

Class attributes:

Attribute	Type	Default	Description
label	str	""	Heading shown in the admin UI
sort_order	int	0	Display order among sections (lower = first)

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Field(...)

Defines a single configurable value. Assign Field(...) instances as class attributes on a Section subclass.

from django_sysconfig.registry import Field

site_name = Field(
    StringFrontendModel,
    label="Site Name",
    comment="Shown in the browser tab.",
    default="My App",
    sort_order=10,
    validators=[NotEmptyValidator()],
    on_save=my_callback,
)

Arguments:

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
frontend_model	type[BaseFrontendModel]	Yes	The field type class
label	str	No	Human-readable label (shown in the admin UI)
comment	str	No	Help text; HTML is allowed
default	Any	No	Value used when no DB record exists
sort_order	int	No	Display order within the section (lower = first)
validators	list[BaseValidator]	No	Validators run before saving
on_save	Callable	No	Callback fired after a successful write
**kwargs	—	No	Passed through to the frontend_model (e.g. choices, step)

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Registry introspection

These methods are available on the config_registry singleton:

config_registry.get_registered_apps()

Returns a list of all registered app labels.

from django_sysconfig.registry import config_registry

config_registry.get_registered_apps()
# ["billing", "myapp", "notifications"]

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config_registry.get_config(app_label)

Returns the AppConfigDefinition for a given app, or None if the app has no registered config.

config_def = config_registry.get_config("billing")
# config_def.app_label → "billing"
# config_def.get_sections() → [("general", <Section>), ("pricing", <Section>)]
# config_def.get_field("pricing.tax_rate") → <Field: tax_rate>

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config_registry.get_all_configs()

Returns a dict of all registered app configs keyed by app label.

all_configs = config_registry.get_all_configs()
# {"billing": <AppConfigDefinition>, "myapp": <AppConfigDefinition>, ...}