Phantom ForeignKey to similar model representing a DB view - django

Question

I'm trying to get this 'phantom' ForeignKey to reference a model that is a view on the backend. The view assembles data that includes some data from the originating table(so they share a primary key).
Here's a simplified version of what we've had to setup(view is more complex than just the model, so it was chosen to design it this way).
class VSpouse(models.Model):
person_id = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True)
...
class Person(models.Model):
person_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
spouse = models.ForeignKey(VSpouse, db_column = 'person_id', to_field='person_id', null=True)
...
Now, since the tables were designed on the backend before models, we have never used syncdb. Because of that, we've never noticed a problem and things work just as expected.
However, now we're starting to develop some Django tests, and when it begins to build the test DB, we see the following:
$ python2 manage.py test misc --traceback
Creating test database for alias 'default'...
Destroying old test database 'default'...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 222, in run_from_argv
self.execute(*args, **options.__dict__)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/test.py", line 72, in execute
super(Command, self).execute(*args, **options)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 255, in execute
output = self.handle(*args, **options)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/test.py", line 89, in handle
failures = test_runner.run_tests(test_labels)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/test/simple.py", line 367, in run_tests
old_config = self.setup_databases()
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/test/simple.py", line 315, in setup_databases
self.verbosity, autoclobber=not self.interactive)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/creation.py", line 293, in create_test_db
load_initial_data=False)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 161, in call_command
return klass.execute(*args, **defaults)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 255, in execute
output = self.handle(*args, **options)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 385, in handle
return self.handle_noargs(**options)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/syncdb.py", line 102, in handle_noargs
cursor.execute(statement)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/postgresql_psycopg2/base.py", line 58, in execute
six.reraise(utils.DatabaseError, utils.DatabaseError(*tuple(e.args)), sys.exc_info()[2])
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/postgresql_psycopg2/base.py", line 54, in execute
return self.cursor.execute(query, args)
DatabaseError: column "person_id" specified more than once
Now, I guess my question is, is there any 'proper' ways of doing this or working around this problem? It would be great if I could just add a switch like real=False to the field definition so it wouldn't try and generate the column when building the test DB. However, I don't think that's currently possible.

Answer 1

Actually, you can. Only it's not called real, but abstract, and it applies to models (but you should be able to use inheritance to address this).
Your model structure might need a little massaging to correspond to what Django expects, but that should get you started in the right direction.
It's documented here.