what is the best conceptional way to save old IDs / reference numbers from several models?
For example:
class Project(models.Model):
reference_number = models.CharField(_('Project ID'), max_length=16,
unique=True)
class Offer(models.Model):
reference_number = models.CharField(_('Offer ID'), max_length=16,
unique=True)
My ideas:
A separated model for each of the models
class OldProjectNumber(models.Model):
project = models.ForeignKey(Project)
old_number = models.CharField(_('Old ID'), max_length=16,
unique=True)
...
One model for all the models?
class OldNumber(models.Model):
project = models.ForeignKey(Project)
offer = models.ForeignKey(Offer)
old_number = models.CharField(_('Old ID'), max_length=16,
unique=True)
Something else?
Maybe a CommaSeparatedCharField to keep the values in the model itself?
I need to be able to search / filter for the old reference numbers for each model.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
It depends on how many old reference will be there.
If there will be only a few old reference numbers you can use CommaSeparatedCharField but in this you will have to specify the max_length which will limit it to few reference numbers and cause problem anytime in future.
I would suggest you to use a textfield and use a json formatted string to store the list of old references.
If the count of reference number can get large, you should use One models for all the models to store the reference number.
Also, Instead of using a foreign key for each of one of models you should use generic foreign key which will map to all other models.
from django.contrib.contenttypes.fields import GenericForeignKey, GenericRelation
from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
class OldNumber(models.Model):
content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType)
object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
content_object = GenericForeignKey('content_type', 'object_id')
and Generic Relation on the model itself.
old_reference = GenericRelation('OldNumber', related_query_name='model_name') # related_query_name for reverse querying
Related
I am running into a little bit of unique problem and wanted to see which solution fit best practice or if I was missing anything in my design.
I have a model - it has a field on it that represents a metric. That metric is a foreign key to an object which can come from several database tables.
Idea one:
Multiple ForeignKey fields. I'll have the benefits of the cascade options, direct access to the foreign key model instance from MyModel, (although that's an easy property to add), and the related lookups. Pitfalls include needing to check an arbitrary number of fields on the model for a FK. Another is logic to make sure that only one FK field has a value at a given time (easy to check presave) although .update poses a problem. Then theres added space in the database from all of the columns, although that is less concerning.
class MyModel(models.Model):
source_one = models.ForeignKey(
SourceOne,
null=True,
blank=True,
on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
db_index=True
)
source_two = models.ForeignKey(
SourceTwo,
null=True,
blank=True,
on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
db_index=True
)
source_three = models.ForeignKey(
SourceThree,
null=True,
blank=True,
on_delete=models.SET_NULL,
db_index=True
)
Idea two:
Store a source_id and source on the model. Biggest concern I have with this is needing to maintain logic to set these fields to null if the source is deleted. It otherwise seems like a cleaner solution, but not sure if the overhead to make sure the data is accurate is worth it. I can probably write some logic in a delete hook on the fk models to clean MyModel up if necessary.
class MyModel(models.Model):
ONE = 1
TWO = 2
THREE = 3
SOURCES = (
(ONE, "SourceOne"),
(TWO, "SourceTwo"),
(THREE, "SourceThree")
)
source_id = models.PositiveIntegerField(null=True, blank=True)
source = models.PositiveIntegerField(null=True, blank=True, choices=SOURCES)
I would love the communities opinion.
Your second idea seems fragile as the integrity is not ensured by the database as you have pointed out yourself.
Without knowing more about the use case, it's difficult to provide an enlightened advice however if your "metric" object is refered by many other tables, I wonder if you should consider approaching this the other way round, i.e. defining the relationships from the models consuming this metric.
To exemplify, let's say that your project is a photo gallery and that your model represents a tag. Tags could be associated to photos, photo albums or users (e.g.. the tags they want to follow).
The approach would be as follow:
class Tag(models.Model):
pass
class Photo(models.Model):
tags = models.ManyToManyField(Tag)
class Album(models.Model):
tags = models.ManyToManyField(Tag)
class User(AbstractUser):
followed_tags = models.ManyToManyField(Tag)
You may even consider to factor in this relationship in an abstract model as outlined below:
class Tag(models.Model):
pass
class TaggedModel(models.Model):
tags = models.ManyToManyField(Tag)
class Meta:
abstract = True
class Photo(TaggedModel):
pass
As mentioned in the comments, you are looking for a Generic Relation:
from django.contrib.contenttypes.fields import GenericForeignKey
from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
class SourceA(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=45)
class SourceB(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=45)
class MyModel(models.Model):
content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
source = GenericForeignKey('content_type', 'object_id')
There are three parts to setting up a Generic Relation:
Give your model a ForeignKey to ContentType. The usual name for this field is “content_type”.
Give your model a field that can store primary key values from the models you’ll be relating to. For most models, this means a PositiveIntegerField. The usual name for this field is “object_id”.
Give your model a GenericForeignKey, and pass it the names of the two fields described above. If these fields are named “content_type” and “object_id”, you can omit this – those are the default field names GenericForeignKey will look for.
Now you can pass any Source instance to the source field of MyModel, regardless of which model it belongs to:
source_a = SourceA.objects.first()
source_b = SourceB.objects.first()
MyModel.objects.create(source=source_a)
MyModel.objects.create(source=source_b)
Model with a Generic relations.
I want MyModel.objects.filter() and do something to add a list containing the objects where their Generic relations is its row from MyModel.objects.filter()
I want to try to make it in one query if it can be done. I am using MySQL if that effects anything.
To clarify I want to
list_of_my_models = MyModel.objects.filter()
then do something so that i can
for my_model in list_of_my_models:
for related_my_model in my_model.related_my_models:
// do something with related_my_model
I tried using OuterRef in annotate with a Subquery, but get the error.
"Expression contains mixed types. You must set output_field." When i visit the page that uses it.
class MyModel(models.Model):
x1= models.CharField(max_length=100)
x2= models.CharField(max_length=255, blank=True)
x3= models.CharField(max_length=255, blank=True)
content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
object_id = models.IntegerField()
content_object = GenericForeignKey()
def custom_models(object):
my_models= MyModel.objects.filter(object_id=OuterRef('pk'), content_type=ContentType.objects.get(model='mymodel', app_label='app_my_model'))
return MyModel.objects.filter(
object_id=object.pk,
content_type=ContentType.objects.get_for_model(object)
).annotate(related_my_models=Subquery(my_models))
So is there any way to fix this or is there an other way to achieve the desired outcome?
I would like to create a view with a table that lists all changes (created/modified) that a user has made on/for any object.
The Django Admin site has similar functionality but this only works for objects created/altered in the admin.
All my models have, in addition to their specific fields, following general fields, that should be used for this purpose:
created_by = models.ForeignKey(User, verbose_name='Created by', related_name='%(class)s_created_items',)
modified_by = models.ForeignKey(User, verbose_name='Updated by', related_name='%(class)s_modified_items', null=True)
created = CreationDateTimeField(_('created'))
modified = ModificationDateTimeField(_('modified'))
I tried playing around with:
u = User.objects.get(pk=1)
u.myobject1_created_items.all()
u.myobject1_modified_items.all()
u.myobject2_created_items.all()
u.myobject2_modified_items.all()
... # repeat for >20 models
...and then grouping them together with itertool's chain(). But the result is not a QuerySet which makes it kind of non-Django and more difficult to handle.
I realize there are packages available that will do this for me, but is it possible to achieve what I want using the above models, without using external packages? The required fields (created_by/modified_by and their timefields) are in my database already anyway.
Any idea on the best way to handle this?
Django admin uses generic foreign keys to handle your case so you should probably do something like that. Let's take a look at how django admn does it (https://github.com/django/django/blob/master/django/contrib/admin/models.py):
class LogEntry(models.Model):
action_time = models.DateTimeField(_('action time'), auto_now=True)
user = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL)
content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType, blank=True, null=True)
object_id = models.TextField(_('object id'), blank=True, null=True)
object_repr = models.CharField(_('object repr'), max_length=200)
action_flag = models.PositiveSmallIntegerField(_('action flag'))
change_message = models.TextField(_('change message'), blank=True)
So, you can add an additional model (LogEntry) that will hold a ForeignKey to the user that changed (added / modified) the object and a GenericForeignKey (https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/ref/contrib/contenttypes/#generic-relations) to the object that was modified.
Then, you can modify your views to add LogEntry objects when objects are modified. When you want to display all changes by a User, just do something like:
user = User.objects.get(pk=1)
changes = LogEntry.objects.filter(user=user)
# Now you can use changes for your requirement!
I've written a nice blog post about that (auditing objects in django) which could be useful: http://spapas.github.io/2015/01/21/django-model-auditing/#adding-simple-auditing-functionality-ourselves
I have a simple userprofile class in django such that
class Profile(models.Model):
user = models.OneToOneField(User,unique=True)
gender = models.IntegerField(blank=True, default=0, choices=UserGender.USER_GENDER,db_column='usr_gender')
education = models.IntegerField(blank=True, default=0, choices=UserEducation.USER_EDU,db_column='usr_education')
mail_preference = models.IntegerField(blank=True, default=1, choices=UserMailPreference.USER_MAIL_PREF,db_column='usr_mail_preference')
birthyear = models.IntegerField(blank=True, default=0,db_column='usr_birthyear')
createdate = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now)
updatedate = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now)
deletedate = models.DateTimeField(blank=True,null=True)
updatedBy = models.ForeignKey(User,unique=False,null=True, related_name='%(class)s_user_update')
deleteBy = models.ForeignKey(User,unique=False,null=True, related_name='%(class)s_user_delete')
activation_key = models.CharField(max_length=40)
key_expires = models.DateTimeField()
You can see that deletedBy and updatedBy are foreign key fields to user class. If I don't write related_name='%(class)s_user_update' it gives me error (I don't know why).
Although this works without any error, it doesn't push the user id's of deletedBy and updatedBy fields although I assign proper user to them.
Could give me any idea and explain the related_name='%(class)s_user_update' part ?
Thanks
'%(class)s_user_update' implies that it is a string awaiting formatting. You would normally see it in the context:
'%(foo)s other' % {'foo': 'BARGH'}
Which would become:
'BARGH other'
You can read more about python string formatting in the python docs. String Formatting Operations
I can't see how the code you have would ever work: perhaps you want:
class Profile(models.Model):
# other attributes here
updated_by = models.ForeignKey('auth.User', null=True, related_name='profile_user_update')
deleted_by = models.ForeignKey('auth.User', null=True, related_name='profile_user_deleted')
# other attributes here
If it does work, it is because django is doing some fancy magic behind the scenes, and replacing '%(class)s' by the class name of the current class.
Notes on the above:
The consistent use of *snake_case* for attributes. If you must use camelCase, then be consistent for all variables. Especially don't mix *snake_case*, camelCase and runwordstogethersoyoucanttellwhereonestartsandtheotherends.
Where you have two attributes that reference the same Foreign Key, you must tell the ORM which one is which for the reverse relation. It will default to 'profile_set' in this case for both, which will give you the validation error.
Use 'auth.User' instead of importing User into the models.py file. It is one less import you'll need to worry about, especially if you don't use the User class anywhere in your models.py file.
You can read more about the related_name stuff here:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/topics/db/queries/#following-relationships-backward
It is possible to make a ForeignKey to more than one model. I want to choose from different models like Parts and Machines Model.
I read this to combine multiple models into one list: How to combine 2 or more querysets in a Django view?
How can I get foreign key to that list somehow?
I know that you asked this over year ago, but I had a similar problem and I want to share a link to the solution for future readers.
Generally the contenttypes framework solves this problem, and I guess this is what Daniel Roseman was talking about.
How to use dynamic foreignkey in Django?
You need generic relations.
A generic relation allows you to dynamically the target model of the foreign key.
I'll provide a comprehensive answer for this question, I know its quite old, but it's still relevant.
We're gonna be using Generic Relations.
First, in settings.py make sure that django.contrib.contenttypes is included in the INSTALLED_APPS array.
Let's create a new model in models.py:
from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
from django.contrib.contenttypes.fields import GenericForeignKey, GenericRelation
With content_type we can associate Image with any other model class, while object_id will hold the other model instance.
class Image(models.Model):
image = models.ImageField(
upload_to="imgs/products", blank=True)
content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
content_object = GenericForeignKey()
To refer back to the Image model from a Company instance we need to make a reverse generic relation
class Company(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
images = GenericRelation(Image)
In schema.py, we can create Images in a Company instance like:
company_instance = Company(name="Apple")
company_instance.save()
for img in imgs:
#Image(image=img, content_object=company_instance)
company_instance.images.create(image=img)
company_instance.images.all() # fetch all images
the company_instance.images field is just a GenericRelatedObjectManager (docs)
This is how the final Image table looks in the database:
The Django-polymorphic library provides a simple solution that should work well with the admin and forms too using formsets.
For example:
from polymorphic.models import PolymorphicModel
class BookOwner(PolymorphicModel):
book = models.ForeignKey(Book, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
class StaffBookOwner(BookOwner):
owner = models.ForeignKey(Staff, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
class StudentBookOwner(BookOwner):
owner = models.ForeignKey(Student, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
With this, you can use the parent model to set the owner to either a Staff or Student instance or use the child models directly.