Callables in settings are not verified at start-up if they are strings

[iafisher]

If you accidentally set, e.g., AXES_LOCKOUT_CALLABLE to an invalid import path, the server will still boot up fine and you won't find out about it until Axes tries to invoke the callable here. In my case, AXES_LOCKOUT_CALLABLE was misconfigured for months before I saw the error in the logs.

It would be ideal if Axes did some kind of verification of the callable settings at start-up. I can think of two ways:

• Verify settings in conf.py
• Verify settings in a custom system check

If this seems like a good idea to you I'd be willing to work on it. Not sure if crashing the server on misconfiguration counts as a backwards-incompatible change or not; if so could print a warning instead.

I am using version 5.39.0.

[aleksihakli]

Thanks for reporting!

This would also be a good opportunity to refactor the callable resolution to use one common function to return one verified callable object from a string path or an object itself. At the moment there is duplicate code in many places and it would be nice to clean that up.

@iafisher and @hirotasoshu would you happen to be interested about improving this and possibly baking a new release as you are familiar with the code base?

[hirotasoshu]

@aleksihakli should these checks be in axes/checks.py or is it better to check them immediately in axes/conf.py? Personally, I like the first option more.
One common function to resolve callables is good idea, i will work on this when i have a little more time

[iafisher]

@hirotasoshu I'd be happy to write the system check if you want to work on the common function for resolving callables. I can get it done today or tomorrow.

[hirotasoshu]

@hirotasoshu I'd be happy to write the system check if you want to work on the common function for resolving callables. I can get it done today or tomorrow.

Ok, I created #1068 for this

[aleksihakli]

Thank you for the work on the PR 👍 Upstreamed, I'll bake a new version to PyPI as well.

[aleksihakli]

Released in version 6.0.2.