Foregin key field name is followed by _id - django

Question

In a model, when a foreign key field is created then Django apparently create another field with the same field name followed by _id.
for example if I have
class Post(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User,on_delete=models.CASCADE,default=None)
dated = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
...
Then I will have the following fields available:
id,user,user_id,dated
I am not sure why this field (user_id) was added?
Later I wanted to override my queryset in a class view
so I was confused which one to use (user field or user_id field)
:
def get_queryset(self):
queryset = super().get_queryset()
return queryset.filter(user_id=self.request.user.id)
Or
def get_queryset(self):
queryset = super().get_queryset()
return queryset.filter(user=self.request.user.id)
I tried both and both worked just fine
My question is:
1) What is the purpose of creating this additional field ?
2) What is the difference between the original foreign key field (user in my case) and user_id field?
3) Will both fields user and user_id available in the database? what is the point of that?
4) Is the content of user and user_id identical in each record? if so ,then what the purpose of this additional field that was created automatically by django?
Thanks a lot

Answer 1

Django only creates one column in the database for the foreign key.
The difference between the field and the _id attribute it generates is that accessing the field performs a query for the full set of columns from the related table in order to construct the complete related object. If you want the full object, use the field (and probably also use select_related() in the initial query to save you from doing N+1 queries).
On the other hand, if all you need is the DB-level value of the foreign key, which is usually the primary key of the related object (and often that is what you want), the _id attribute shortcut is there for you and already has the data, because that's what was actually in the foreign key column.
In other words, suppose I have models like this:
class ModelA(models.Model):
name = models.TextField()
class ModelB(models.Model):
name = models.TextField()
a_instance = models.ForeignKey(ModelA)
If you query for a ModelB, like ModelB.objects.get(pk=12), you'll get a query like this:
SELECT id, name, a_instance_id
FROM your_app.modelb
WHERE id = 12;
Notice a_instance_id is the name of the column -- it's just a foreign key, all it stores is a pointer to the primary key of a ModelA instance. If you just need that primary key, accessing the a_instance_id attribute has it already without needing to do another query. If you access the a_instance field, though, you get to do another query:
SELECT id, name
FROM your_app.modela
WHERE id = (whatever the value of that foreign key was);