Django fixtures primary key error, need natural keys solution - django

Question

So I have a Film model that holds a list of Actors model in a many to many field:
class Person(models.Model):
full = models.TextField()
short = models.TextField()
num = models.CharField(max_length=5)
class Film(models.Model):
name = models.TextField()
year = models.SmallIntegerField(blank=True)
actors = models.ManyToManyField('Person')
I'm trying to load some initial data from json fixtures, however the problem I have is loading the many to many actors field.
For example I get the error:
DeserializationError: [u"'Anna-Varney' value must be an integer."]
with these fixtures:
{
"pk": 1,
"model": "data.Film",
"fields": {
"actors": [
"Anna-Varney"
],
"name": "Like a Corpse Standing in Desperation (2005) (V)",
"year": "2005"
}
while my actors fixture looks like this:
{
"pk": 1,
"model": "data.Person",
"fields": {
"full": "Anna-Varney",
"num": "I",
"short": "Anna-Varney"
}
}
So the many to many fields must use the pk integer, but the problem is that the data isn't sorted and for a long list of actors I don't think its practical to manually look up the pk of each one. I've been looking for solutions and it seems I have to use natural keys, but I'm not exactly sure how to apply those for my models.
EDIT: I've changed my models to be:
class PersonManager(models.Manager):
def get_by_natural_key(self, full):
return self.get(full=full)
class Person(models.Model):
objects = PersonManager()
full = models.TextField()
short = models.TextField()
num = models.CharField(max_length=5)
def natural_key(self):
return self.full
But I'm still getting the same error

Answer 1

There's a problem with both the input and the natural_key method.
Documentation: Serializing Django objects - natural keys states:
A natural key is a tuple of values that can be used to uniquely
identify an object instance without using the primary key value.
The Person natural_key method should return a tuple
def natural_key(self):
return (self.full,)
The serialised input should also contain tuples/lists for the natural keys.
{
"pk": 1,
"model": "data.film",
"fields": {
"actors": [
[
"Matt Damon"
],
[
"Jodie Foster"
]
],
"name": "Elysium",
"year": 2013
}
}