Taking advantage of signals doesn’t necessarily mean providing no sane defaults. You can send signals and provide default event handling. Here is a couple of ideas how this can be done:

• Your app can check if there are any listeners and connect the default handlers if there is none.
• You can ship an auxiliary app that connects default handlers when added to INSTALLED_APPS.

I personally prefer the second approach since it’s simpler and more explicit. I’m sure there are other ways to implement default handlers for signals.

Dispatch_uid

Don’t forget to assign a unique dispatch_uid for each connect() call. Otherwise your handler can get connected twice. I would also suggest you to use both module path and your handler function’s name in your dispatch_uid:

"%s.%s" % (os.path.splitext(__file__)[0].replace(os.sep, '.')[1:],
           handler_name)

Now I should take my own advice and replace hardcoded User.message_set.create()s with signals in django-simple-friends.

Related posts:

1. Working with files in Django – Part 1
2. Working with files in Django – Part 2
3. Working with files in Django – Part 3