How can I create a model that represents a spreadsheet? - django

Question

I am trying to build a table style app to allow tracking items in a spreadsheet that can be added to a branded website. My table would look something like this if using a spreadsheet:
Customer Name
Customer Address
Producer
Mark
233 Main St
Greg
Company
Date Ordered
Rep
Date Received
Cost
Quote Number
A
7/20/21
John
7/25/21
500
JDHP
B
7/20/21
Mary
C
7/23/21
John
7/25/21
1500
584D
D
7/18/21
Mary
7/22/21
400
J5HP
Effectively the idea is that I'd have a model that houses each Customer's different quotes. I have 2 categories of companies (public and private) that would each be tracked so I'm envisioning a large form that houses these three small forms (customer info, private company quotes and public company quotes). I would be including every company in every sheet whether we reach out to them for a quote or not so we know what options are still available if the customer requests more quotes.
I've been looking at the django formsets as a possible option but don't fully understand how they work. I watched some tutorials and read through the documentation but it seems like those will simply add a blank input after all complete ones already in the table. Is this a correct interpretation of how formsets work? Or would they effectively allow me to nest multiple forms within a larger form? Secondary to that is how would I implement this model? I tried company_date_ordered, company_rep, company_date_received, etc. for each company in my list but got a lot of clash errors.

Answer 1

Welcome to web development.
A few points:
It's been said, "Applications age like fish, data ages like wine" - what this means is its best to focus your attention on your data models and concern yourself less with the application code itself
Spreadsheets are themselves tables - meaning you wouldn't build a model that represents a spreadsheet but rather you would build a model that represents a row (object) or elements of each row (objects) of the spreadsheet
That being said, given your example let's consider what objects we are working with:
Your first "spreadsheet" looks like it could be a combination of a Customer and Producer table - for this example we will simplify this to just a Customer table which will contain the field producer
Your second spreadsheet is a bit more complex, it appears to join Company, something like an Order and possibly a Representative (and maybe even more) - let's break this down into each of its parts:
models.py
class Customer(models.Model):
"""
this is a simple model that represents a customer,
it doesn't have any relations to other tables
"""
name = models.CharField(...)
address = models.CharField(...)
producer = models.CharField(...)
class Order(models.Model):
"""
this table represents orders,
it will have relations to other tables, add them as needed
"""
# fields:
date_ordered = models.DateField(...)
date_received = models.DateField(...)
quote_number = models.CharField(...)
"""
an Order can only be associated to one Company
but a Company can have many Orders
therefore we will use a ForeignKey
the same goes for Representative
"""
# relations:
company = models.ForeignKey("Company", ..., related_name = "orders")
representative = models.ForeignKey(...)
class Company(models.Model):
"""
this model represents a Company
its related to Orders,
but the relation is defined on the Orders table
"""
name = models.CharField(...)
class Representative(models.Model):
...
Spend some time thinking about what your entities are and how they relate to one another. Once your data structure is well formed, you can start to build out interfaces for users to view, edit, and add to your tables - forms are a good way to start but they are certainly not the only option. Best of luck!