Django error with models (ManyToManyField) - django

Question

I was building my app using django but I got this error in the models.py file:
creator = models.ManyToManyField(Teacher, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
NameError: name 'Teacher' is not defined
This is my current code in models.py:
from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
# Create your models here.
class School(models.Model):
nombre = models.CharField(max_length=355)
profesoras = models.ManyToManyField(Teacher)
class Teacher(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name="teacherClass", blank=False)
school = models.ManyToManyField(School, blank=True)
class Post(models.Model):
creator = models.ManyToManyField(Teacher, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
text = models.TextField(max_length=2000)
Do you know how can I solve this error?

Answer 1

The issue here is that you are trying to reference a model that has not been created yet. The Django docs state what to do in such a case.
If you need to create a relationship on a model that has not yet been
defined, you can use the name of the model, rather than the model
object itself:
class Car(models.Model):
manufacturer = models.ForeignKey(
'Manufacturer',
on_delete=models.CASCADE,
)
# ...
class Manufacturer(models.Model):
# ...
pass
So for your case, you would just change your model relationships to strings.
from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
# Create your models here.
class School(models.Model):
nombre = models.CharField(max_length=355)
profesoras = models.ManyToManyField("Teacher") # Make this a string because it has not been defined yet
class Teacher(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name="teacherClass", blank=False)
school = models.ManyToManyField(School, blank=True)
class Post(models.Model):
creator = models.ManyToManyField("Teacher", on_delete=models.CASCADE) # Same with this one.
title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
text = models.TextField(max_length=2000)
The django docs are always really useful and have a lot of good information.

Answer 2

The error is just fine because you are using it before declaring it and also your relationships are a little messy. You can say that you can have as many schools as you wish in this app and each professor teaches in many schools so it can be something like this by using many to many relation:
class School(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=355)
class Teacher(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name="teacherClass", blank=False, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
school = models.ManyToManyField(School, blank=True)
class Post(models.Model):
creator = models.ManyToManyField(Teacher)
title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
text = models.TextField(max_length=2000)
I suggest you that study a little bit about relations in databases so you won't have any similar problem in future.