Closing the DB connections after accessing Django ORM in secondary threads ¶

Since Django will create a new connection per thread when you access the ORM, and connections are left open even when the threads are terminated, we need to close the database connection explicitly when terminating a thread:

import threading
from django.db import connection


class MyThread(threading.Thread):

    def run(self):
        while keep_running:
            ...
            ...

        # When the device's communication loop exis, we still need to close the
        # database connection, since Django will create a new connection per thread
        # when you access the ORM, and connections are left open even when the threads
        # are terminated; see:
        # "Make sure you are closing the DB connections after accessing Django ORM in your threads":
        # https://james.lin.net.nz/2016/04/22/make-sure-you-are-closing-the-db-connections-after-accessing-django-orm-in-your-threads/
        connection.close()

If not, possible errors include:

• Too many connections
• "Database" is being accessed by other users

References:

• Make sure you are closing the DB connections after accessing Django ORM in your threads
• Database is being accessed by other users error when using ThreadPoolExecutor with Django