I spin up a django project. Afterwards, i didn't write models.py but instead I created a database from MySQL command line(independent from django) and created three tables with required columns. Finally i connected my django app with that database successfully. I applied migrations. But now i am confused do i need to write models.py with every field name as in column?
I remember implementing a basic project in which i did write models.py and created database using "python manage.py shell" and then put values using
"from polls.models import Choice, Question"? How do i put data now initially and then using python on some action from UI?
Do i need models.py even for ready made mysql databases?
You do not need to construct models. Some (small) webservers are even completely stateless, and thus do not use a database. But a large part of how Django can help you is based on models.
You can write your own queries, forms, etc. But often by using a ModelForm, Django can for example remove a large amount of boilerplate code. It will make it furthermore less likely that there are mistakes in your code. So although not strictly necessary, the models are usually a keystone in how Django can help you.
You can use the inspectdb [Django-doc] command to inspect the database, and let Django "sketch" the models for you. Usually you will have still some work. Since Django can, for example, not derive that a field is an EmailField, since both a CharField and EmailField look exactly the same at the database side.
You do not need to use inspectdb however. You can construct your own models. If you create your own models, but these exist already at the database side, you might want to set managed = False [Django-doc] in the Meta of your model, to prevent Django from constructing migrations.
Related
Let's say that we have a Django app that looks on a legacy database.
If someone make changes on some database tables from a db client as DBeaver for example and not through Django models, is there a way to identify these changes?
You can do in a terminal, inside your Django project directory : python manage.py inspectdb > models.py
You will have models related to your tables.
By default, inspectdb creates unmanaged models. That is, managed = False in the model’s Meta class tells Django not to manage each table’s creation, modification, and deletion.
If you do want to allow Django to manage the table’s lifecycle, you’ll need to change the managed option above to True (or remove it because True is its default value).
I am working on already existing data on relational database. Now question is that how to build models and how to update the tables with new data coming from user (technically django forms)?
Django natively supports creating models for and working with existing data. From the documentation:
Integrating Django with a legacy database
Django will still need to create several of its own tables, but will adapt to use your existing tables. From the doc, you can auto-create models like this:
python manage.py inspectdb > models.py
You'll need to determine whether you want to manage updates to the table structure, but that's getting into details that will be specific to your project.
I want to generate SQL code and take from that code, generating a Django model to avoid errors.
They will say that you first create the model and run the syncdb or migrate but my case is unlike the database is already created and I now want the model
Run this command to auto-generate models from an already existing database. But first make sure you've properly linked database to django app .
python manage.py inspectdb > models.py
Do check models.py file and make some changes if you something isn't rendered correctly.
For inspectdb approach, read this: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/howto/legacy-databases/
Alternatively, you can write all the models by yourself and set managed = False. No database table creation of deletion will be executed by Django on this model. But it is somewhat complicated and puts some limits on model relationships.
For managed=False approach, read this: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/ref/models/options/#managed
In a django app, I have two postgresql databases connected through settings.py: one is default and other is AppDb. AppDb is placed on a remote machine.
I want to query from a 'Courses' model from AppDb using 'using()' and 'Courses' model is not available in default database.
So my query goes like this:
courseInfo = Courses.objects.using('AppDb').filter(cuser_id = 12)
But I am getting NameError for 'Courses'
Can I have a solution for such queries without using routers
If you have an existing database, you still need to create an app and models for that database in order to use the ORM.
To help you create the model classes, you can use the inspectdb management command which will try to guess the models from an existing database and create the models.py for you. Its not perfect, but it will save you some time.
You will still have to make sure the models have a primary key and are written in the correct order (so that foreign keys will work correctly).
After you initially create the model and you want to change the fields in the models. If you syncdb ,it replies no fixtures found, meaning to say the models has not recognised the change. One way to solve this is to delete the database and recreate the database but you lose all the data. Is there any other better solution? Thanks...
Use south to help you for models changes. It will automatically detect any changes to models and generate appropriate script to update db schema.