Troubleshooting

Djrill throwing errors? Not sending what you want? Here are some tips...

Figuring Out What’s Wrong

  • Check the error message: Look for a Mandrill error message in your web browser or console (running Django in dev mode) or in your server error logs. As of v1.4, Djrill reports the detailed Mandrill error when something goes wrong. And when the error is something like “invalid API key” or “invalid email address”, that’s probably 90% of what you’ll need to know to solve the problem.
  • Check the Mandrill API logs: The Mandrill dashboard includes an incredibly-helpful list of your recent API calls – and you can click into each one to see the full request and response. Check to see if the data you thought you were sending actually made it into the request, and if Mandrill has any complaints in the response.
  • Double-check common issues:
    • Did you set your MANDRILL_API_KEY in settings.py?
    • Did you add 'djrill' to the list of INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py?
    • Are you using a valid from address? Django’s default is “webmaster@localhost”, which won’t cut it. Either specify the from_email explicitly on every message you send through Djrill, or add DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL to your settings.py.
  • Try it without Djrill: Try switching your EMAIL_BACKEND setting to Django’s File backend and then running your email-sending code again. If that causes errors, you’ll know the issue is somewhere other than Djrill. And you can look through the EMAIL_FILE_PATH file contents afterward to see if you’re generating the email you want.

Getting Help

If you’ve gone through the suggestions above and still aren’t sure what’s wrong, the Djrill community is happy to help. Djrill is supported and maintained by the people who use it – like you! (We’re not Mandrill employees.)

You can ask in either of these places (but please pick only one per question!):

Ask on StackOverflow
Tag your question with both Django and Mandrill to get our attention. Bonus: a lot of questions about Djrill are actually questions about Django itself, so by asking on StackOverflow you’ll also get the benefit of the thousands of Django experts there.
Open a GitHub issue
We do our best to answer questions in GitHub issues. And if you’ve found a Djrill bug, that’s definitely the place to report it. (Or even fix it – see Contributing.)

Wherever you ask, it’s always helpful to include the relevant portions of your code, the text of any error messages, and any exception stack traces in your question.