Error when using django.template

Of course the @Sudipta's answer works correctly but (just for the future) for the explanation you can also visit the "Creating Template Objects" -> "A special Python prompt" section in Django book

If you want to use the template system without the django shell, you can do:

from django.conf import settings
settings.configure()

and after this your code

t = template.Template('My name is {{ name }}.')

I also had the same problem.

The main point is that in the django book 2, this piece of code is not supposed for users to put into a Python IDLE started from your python.exe ( presumably in C:\Program Files\Python33 on Windows).

Rather, it is just showing how the piece of code will look like. The solution is simply run 'cmd' and change the directory to your 'mysite', and run

python manage.py shell

which ensure that the 'mysite.settings.py' is used.

You can't access and run django projects from python shell. Django doesn't know what project you want to work on.

You have to do one of these things:

1. python manage.py shell
2. Set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable in your OS to mysite.settings
3. Use setup_environ in the python interpreter:
   from django.core.management import setup_environ
   from mysite import settings
   setup_environ(settings)

The first one is easiest and best method. Run your code in the django shell.