Django: null value in column "created_at" violates not-null constraint - django

Question

I'm trying to add records via the code below:
Post.objects.update_or_create(
user=user,
defaults={
"title": external_post.get('title'),
"body": external_post.get('body'),
"seo": external_post.get('seo')
}
)
I've successfully migrated the model but I'm getting the error " null value in column "created_at" violates not-null constraint".
created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

Answer 1

I faced this same problem when I was using the #transaction atomic decorator in Django. Basically the reason why I faced the same error was that I was not using the default auto-increment ID in one of my models but rather I had specified a particular field as the primary key using primary_key=True
As a result my data contained two primary keys that were the same. This resulted in an 'update' operation rather than a 'create' operation in the database.
So, Django was trying to update an entry but the created_at field was missing hence the error.
I would suggest you do this instead:
post,created = Post.objects.update_or_create(
user=user,
defaults={
"title": external_post.get('title'),
"body": external_post.get('body'),
"seo": external_post.get('seo')
})
if created:
# your code goes here
#(this ensures that the code is executed only if an entry is getting created in the database)
You can read this for a better explaination: https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/17654