I am building a Quiz app where a user (Content Creator or Author) can create quizzes (choice based questions and their solutions) from a specific domain. These quiz can be attempted by other users (Consumers - not yet implemented).
To allow quiz consumers to be able to search questions based on specific domains of their interest (and to add granularity to the quiz content), I am implementing a tagging system attached to the questions.
Here are my models:
class question(models.Model):
ques_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
ques_text = models.TextField(max_length=1024, blank=False)
ques_author = models.ForeignKey('author')
ques_created = models.DateField(auto_now_add=True)
ques_dscore = models.IntegerField()
ques_bloom = models.CharField(max_length=3)
ques_subject = models.CharField(max_length=3)
ques_type = models.CharField(max_length=1)
ques_flags = models.CharField(max_length=16)
ques_quiz = models.ManyToManyField('quiz')
def __unicode__(self):
return self.ques_text
class choice(models.Model):
choice_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
choice_text = models.CharField(max_length=256, blank=False)
choice_ques = models.ForeignKey('question')
choice_ans = models.BooleanField(default=False)
choice_tags = models.CharField(max_length=32)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.choice_text
class answer(models.Model):
answer_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
answer_text = models.TextField(max_length=1024)
answer_ques = models.ForeignKey('question')
answer_choice = models.ForeignKey('choice')
answer_tags = models.CharField(max_length=128)
class author(models.Model):
user = models.OneToOneField(User)
domain = models.CharField(max_length=16)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.user.username
# a table for storing all the tags
class tags(models.Model):
tags_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
tags_text = models.CharField(max_length=16)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.tags_text
# table that connects tags with question attached to the tag
# from all the research on the web, it can be infered that
# 3NF tagging (Toxi Solution) is the best way to go
# good for inserts but slow on selects
class tagcon(models.Model):
tagcon_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
tagcon_tags = models.ForeignKey('tags')
tagcon_ques = models.ForeignKey('question')
I have currently applied the 3NF tagging Toxi solution. The issue is that a denormalized system would help in faster selects and a 3NF would be faster inserts but slow searches.
I am confused if I should use ManyToMany field type for tags. Could someone enlighten if it would be better to use a ManyToMany field inbuilt in Django or implement the 3NF system as done?
This is already exactly the same as a ManyToManyField. The only difference is that adding the field would give you an explicit accessor from question to tag.
(Note, your models are very odd. There is absolutely no benefit in prefixing every field name with an abbreviated version of the model name; you can only ever access the field via the model anyway, so you would always be doing question.ques_text, which is redundant. And you shouldn't be defining your own PK fields unless you have a very good reason.)
In my opinion I suggest you try these 2 projects
django-tagging.
django-taggit.
Related
Let's say I have the following models:
from django.db import models
class Reporter(models.Model):
first_name = models.CharField(max_length=30)
last_name = models.CharField(max_length=30)
email = models.EmailField()
class Article(models.Model):
headline = models.CharField(max_length=100)
pub_date = models.DateField()
reporter = models.ForeignKey(Reporter, related_name="articles", on_delete=models.CASCADE)
I'd like to add a favorite_article field to my Reporter model that will reference a specific Article from reporter.articles.
One option is put the information into the Article model instead:
class Article(models.Model):
headline = models.CharField(max_length=100)
pub_date = models.DateField()
reporter = models.ForeignKey(Reporter, related_name="articles", on_delete=models.CASCADE)
is_favorite = models.BooleanField()
But this doesn't seem like a very clean solution. Is there a better method to do this?
The approach you've suggested will work, however in its current form it allows for multiple Articles to be the favorite of one Reporter. With a bit of extra processing you can ensure that only one (at most) Article per Reporter is the favorite.
Making a few modifications to a couple of the answers to the question Unique BooleanField value in Django? we can restrict one True value per Reporter rather than one True value for the entire Article model. The approach is to check for other favorite Articles for the same Reporter and set them to not be favorites when saving an instance (rather than using a validation restriction).
I'd also suggest using a single transaction in the save method so that if saving the instance fails the other instances are not modified.
Here's an example:
from django.db import transaction
class Article(models.Model):
headline = models.CharField(max_length=100)
pub_date = models.DateField()
reporter = models.ForeignKey(Reporter, related_name="articles", on_delete=models.CASCADE)
is_favorite = models.BooleanField(default=False)
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
with transaction.atomic():
if self.is_favorite:
reporter_id = self.reporter.id if self.reporter is not None else self.reporter_id
other_favorites = Article.objects.filter(is_favorite=True, reporter_id=reporter_id)
if self.pk is not None: # is None when creating a new instance
other_favorites.exclude(pk=self.pk)
other_favorites.update(is_favorite=False)
return super().save(*args, **kwargs)
I've also changed the approach to use a filter rather than a get just in case.
Then to get the favorite article for a reporter, you can use:
try:
favorite_article = reporter.articles.get(is_favorite=True)
except Article.DoesNotExist:
favorite_article = None
which you could wrap into a method/property of the Reporter class.
I'm doing some querying currently and I was wondering if I would be able to query something from these 3 models where the return would give me all the projects the users are working on. I know about the basic filtering however thats not really enough in this case, how would one go about querying through 2 foreign keys.
class User(models.Model):
first_name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
last_name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
email = models.EmailField()
class ProjectUser(models.Model):
project = models.ForeignKey("Project", on_delete=models.CASCADE)
user = models.ForeignKey("User", on_delete=models.CASCADE)
is_lead = models.BooleanField(default=False)
class Meta:
unique_together = (("project", "user"),)
class Project(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
client = models.CharField(max_length=255)
complete = models.BooleanField(default=False)
You can obtain the Projects a user is working on with:
Project.objects.filter(
projectuser__user=user
)
The double underscores are used to look "through" relations. Furthermore the default related_query_name=… parameter [Django-doc] is, if not specified, the name of the model in lowercase.
Such a question, I want to create a price comparison site, there are two ideas how to implement a list of prices from different stores.
First via ForeignKey
class Price(models.Model):
price = models.DecimalField()
shop = models.CharField()
class Product(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
prices = models.ForeignKey()
JSONfield second method
class Product(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
data = JSONField()
""" Product.objects.create(name='product', data={'price': 999,
'shop': 'Amazon.com'}
def __str__(self):
return self.name
If anyone has experience, what works faster and more reliable if a large number of goods? Thanks for the early ones.
I'm kind of new to django. While writing the models for an app I'm doing, I felt like I was doing something wrong because of all the foreign keys I was using for a single model (ticket model to be specific)
My thinking at the beginning was that I wanted each Ticket to keep the information on it's creator, what team this ticket is assigned to and the comments made on the ticket. And other information that don't need foreign keys. Am I doing this right ? I dont know why, but I feel like there is a better way.
class Team(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
description = models.CharField(max_length=2000)
members = models.ManyToManyField(User, through='Team_members')
def __str__(self):
return self.name
class Ticket(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
creator = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
team = models.ForeignKey(Team, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
comments = models.ForeignKey(Comment, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
#worker = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE) *to be finished
description = models.CharField(max_length=500)
status = models.BooleanField(default=False)
date_opened = models.DateTimeField('date opened')
date_closed = models.DateTimeField('date closed',null=True, blank=True)
def __str__(self):
return self.name
class Team_member:
team = models.ForeignKey(Team)
user = models.ForeignKey(User)
date = models.DateTimeField('date joined')
class Comment:
text = models.CharField(max_length=2000)
user = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
def __str__(self):
return self.text
Your question actually has very little (like, nothing?) to do with Django.
Please read about database normalization, it should answer your questions.
Regarding your models, I could notice the following:
Your models look quite good. Don't be afraid of foreign keys, they are the main reason you use a relational database :)
I assume, User might be a member of a Team (service?) or somebody who opens a ticket. If so: when you will have worker foreign key, you most likely won't need team in the Ticket model. It will be redundant, as worker would have a relation to Team.
Nitpicking: Team_member is not pythonic, a PEP8 compliant version would be TeamMember
Given a queryset for one model, I want to get a queryset of another model that is related by foreign key. Take the Django project docs' weblog schema:
class Blog(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
tagline = models.TextField()
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
class Author(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
email = models.EmailField()
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
class Entry(models.Model):
blog = models.ForeignKey(Blog)
headline = models.CharField(max_length=255)
body_text = models.TextField()
pub_date = models.DateField()
mod_date = models.DateField()
authors = models.ManyToManyField(Author)
n_comments = models.IntegerField()
n_pingbacks = models.IntegerField()
rating = models.IntegerField()
def __unicode__(self):
return self.headline
Suppose I have an author object, and I want to get every blog that author has written for, as a queryset. I do something like author_blogs = [entry.blog for entry in author.entry_set]. But I'm left with a list in this case, not a queryset. Is there a way I can do this directly with ORM queries, so I can set it up via a custom Entry manager with use_for_related_fields = True and do something like author_blogs = author.entry_set.blogs, and get the benefits of delayed evaluation, etc., of a queryset?
Edited scenario and solution
So, I realized after the fact that the application of my question is slightly different than how I posed it above, for which Daniel Roseman's situation makes a lot of sense. My situation is really more like author.entry_set.manager_method().blogs, where manager_method() returns a queryset of Entry objects. I accepted his answer because it inspired the solution I found which is to do:
author_blogs = Blog.objects.filter(entry__in=author.entry_set.manager_method())
The nice thing is that it only uses one DB query. It's a bit tricky and verbose, so I think it's best to define blogs() as an object method of Author, returning the above.
The trick for this is to remember that if you want a queryset of Blogs, you should start with the Blog model. Then, you can use the double-underscore syntax to follow relations. So:
author_blogs = Blog.objects.filter(entry__authors=author)