Here's the scenario:
I have a Student Model with subject field connected with Many-to-Many relationship to Subject Model
class Student(models.Model):
(...)
subject = models.ManyToManyField(Subject)
In Subject Model i have a program field connected with Many-to-Many relationship to Programs Model. Subject Model got also CharField name.
class Subject(models.Model):
(...)
program = models.ManyToManyField(Programs)
In Programs Model i have a field:
class Programs(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=40)
(...)
Django creates additional table for many-to-many fields. In my application I create (with form) a Program and Subject corresponding to Program. Then i create some Students and choose some subjects.
How can i access program name field (Student.objects.all()) and display what program name Student is using ? Is it possible, or i need to create additional fields in Student Model connected with Many-to-Many relationships with Program Model ?
Am I right in thinking that you want to return a list of the program names for the programs belonging to each subject in student.subject?
If so you could use this as a method of the Student model:
def get_program_names(self)
programs = []
for subject in self.subjects:
programs += [program.name for program in subject.program]
return programs
It sounds from your question, however, that you expect only one program name to be returned. if this is the case then maybe you should replace your manyToMany fields with ForeignKey fields, which give a one to one relationship between two models, meaning that this method should work:
def get_program_name(self):
return self.subject.program.name
(either way, there is no reason you should have to create a direct link between your student model and the program model, unless you wish to reduce the number of database calls, in which case you could add a field to Student which is updated with the latest program name or similar.)
I hope that I haven't misunderstood your question.
Related
First of all, yes: I've read Django's foreign key and many-to-many documentation, but I'm still not 100% clear on how to implement relationships on a practical level, especially regarding the hierarchy of the relationships.
One-to-one
I am aware of how to form one-to-one relationships. However, on a more conceptual level, which model should contain that reference to the other one? Let's say I have a Citizen, and a Passport. Now, it's obvious that one Citizen can only have a single Passport and viceversa, but, ideally, should the Citizen contain a field referencing to his Passport, or should the Passport model contain a reference to the Citizen it belongs to?
Many-to-many
For the sake of simplicity, let's say I have a Person model and a Trip model (Trip as in going out on a trip somewhere). Many Persons can participate in a single Trip. Or in other words: a Person can participate in many Trips and in any single Trip, a lot of Persons can participate. This looks like a many-to-many relationship, but, again, ideally, which model should contain the definition for the relationship, the Person with a trips field or the Trip with a participants field? And why? Does it even make any practical difference?
Thank you.
This depends on your business logic. As a rule of thumb I'd suggest to think about the admin app. How would you like to add new objects?
When adding new objects, how would you like to add related objects?
Let's say you have these models:
Citizen(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
Passport(models.Model):
number = models.CharField()
citizen = models.OneToOneField('Citizen', related_name='passport')
When adding new passport object, you have the possibility to add new citizen, if it doesn't yet exist. Since this doesn't look very logical to me, I'd change the relation as:
Citizen(models.Model):
# other fields
passport = models.OneToOneField('Passport', related_name='citizen')
Now we can add a new citizen object in the admin and add the related passport object within the same page.
If you use the admin app, this should lead you to more ergonomical design.
EDIT: expand with many-to-many example
Better example for a m2m relation would be StackOverflow - there are questions and tags. A question has many tags, and a tag has many questions. Let's say the models look like this:
Question(models.Model):
title = models.CharField()
body = models.TextField()
author = models.CharField()
tags = models.ManyToManyField('Tag', related_name='questions')
Tag(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
Why do we put the relation in Question? This should be very logical - when creating a new question you'd like to set the tags for it. When creating a new tag you don't care about any questions associated with it. You can create a tag and later when creating questions, associate them with the tag.
If a tag doesn't exist yet you can add it from the admin, when adding a new question.
I hope this second example is more palpable.
The theory behind this is called database normalization which is a ladder of best practices you should look up if you want to know more about how to structure your data.
The third form tells us that:
"[Every] non-key [attribute] must provide a fact about the key, the whole key, and nothing but the key."
So in the case of ForeignKey fields it should be on the Child model, because it doesn't tell us anything about the parent, but it does tells us what parent the child belongs to.
The mental model that you should have is Parent and Child. Every relationship has two models. So think of one as the Parent model or the Primary model and think of the other one as the Child model or the Secondary model.
NOTE: Always put your relationship field in the CHILD model.
Here is how I would solve your problems:
For the first one, I will have a mental model that Citizen is the Parent and Passport is the child.
class Citizen(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
info = models.TextField()
class Passport(models.Model):
owner = models.OneToOneField(Citizen)
unique_no = models.CharField(max_length=30, unique=True)
For the second problem, do the same. I would choose Person as the parent model and Trip as the child model.
class Person(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
info = models.TextField()
class Trip(models.Model):
person = models.ManyToManyField(Person)
info = models.TextField()
If you have sqlitebrowser, you can use that to open your database and check what tables were created according to your models. Then, you will have a clearer idea as to how Django sees your models.
I am working in django, am planning a database for rides for users.
each User can be on multiple Rides (over time) and each Ride can have multiple Users (passengers) in it.
Also, for each Ride there has to be only one Driver (also a User) so I think I have a many-to many relationship between the Rides and Users tables for what user is on what ride, and also a One-To-Many relationship between the Rides's Driver_id and the User_id. right?
My questions are-
I saw in the django docs that I should put a many-to-many field in One of the models. Does it matter which one? and also, does it create a new table like rides_users?
and also, what is the difference (in One-To-many relationship) between using a foreignKey field and a OneToManyField field?
EDIT:
Currently, there are my models:
def get_image_path(models.Model):
return os.path.join('photos',str(instance.id),filename)
class UserProfile(models.Model):
user=models.OneToOneField(User)
phone_number=models.CharField(max_length=12)
profile_picture=models.ImageField(upload_to=get_image_path, black=True, null=True)
class Ride(models.Model):
driver=models.ForeignKey(UserProfile, related_name="r_driver")
destination=models.ForeignKey(Destination, related_name="r_final_destination")
leaving_time=models.DateTimeField()
num_of_spots=models.IntergerField()
passengers=models.ManyToMany(UserProfile, related_name="r_passengers")
mid_destinations=models.ManyToMany(Destination, related_name="r_mid_destinations")
class Destination(models.Model):
name=models.CharField(max_length=30)
As you can see, each Ride has multiple mid_destination and multiple passengers. a Ride also has One driver and One final destination.
The Issue is - when a User adds a Ride, I want the driver, destination and mid_destinations and the rest of the fields to be set by the User (the driver is user adding the Ride), Except for the passengers field. I want the other Users to add themselves to the ride, so when the Ride is created the User (driver) doesn't have to set the passengers.
How do I go about it? and also, any other suggestions about the models?
There is no such thing as a OneToManyField.
It doesn't matter from a practical point of view which side the ManyToManyField lives on. Personally, I'd put it on Ride, both to avoid changing the User model and because conceptually I'd say that rides are the main objects here.
And yes, adding the field will automatically create the linking table.
what you want is probably something like this
class MyModel(models.Model):
driver = models.ForeignKey(to=User, related_name='r_driver')
# you need to use a related name if you want to link to the same model more than once
passengers = models.ManyToManyField(User, related_name="r_passengers")
I have three models:
System_Contact
System
Contact_list
The Contact_List model has two fields: contact and sys and, not surprisingly, is just a manyToMany model to associate a list of contacts to each system. I have modelForm for adding a new contact to the system's list of contacts:
class Add_Contact_Form(ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Contact_List
fields = ('contact',)
Simple, right? My confusion is this: Even thought the Contact_List model has many many duplicate contacts (because one contact can be associated with many systems) each contact is only displayed once within the form's Select widget.
Why?!
I mean, this is a great default behaviour for my purposes, but I want to make sure this is actually the correct default behaviour that I can rely on, not some random error I have done that just happens to work out for me now.
It's not that it's default behaviour, it's that the select widget in your contact_list form is displaying all of the entries that are from the contact table.
Every model is a table in the database, therefore you have 3 tables:
ContactTable - where every row in the table is a person
SystemTable - where every row in the table is a computer (for arguements sake)
ContactListTable - where every row is a mapping between a system and a list of users
If this is what you are trying to do, you should have the following:
class Contact(models.Model):
name = ...
class System(models.Model):
type = ...
class ContactList(models.MOdel):
system = models.ForeignKey(System)
contacts = models.ManyToManyField(Contact)
This means that every row in the ContactList table is a relationship between a particular machine from the system table and a list of contacts from the contact table
This is a problem concerning django.
I have a model say "Automobiles". This will have some basic fields like "Color","Vehicle Owner Name", "Vehicle Cost".
I want to provide a form where the user can add extra fields depending on the automobile that he is adding. For example, if the user is adding a "Car", he will extra fields in the form, dynamically at run time, like "Car Milage", "Cal Manufacturer".
Suppose if the user wants to add a "Truck", he will add "Load that can be carried", "Permit" etc.
How do I achieve this in django?
There are two questions here:
How to provide a form where the user can add new fields at run time?
How to add the fields to the database so that it can be retrieved/queried later?
There are a few approaches:
key/value model (easy, well supported)
JSON data in a TextField (easy, flexible, can't search/index easily)
Dynamic model definition (not so easy, many hidden problems)
It sounds like you want the last one, but I'm not sure it's the best for you. Django is very easy to change/update, if system admins want extra fields, just add them for them and use south to migrate. I don't like generic key/value database schemas, the whole point of a powerful framework like Django is that you can easily write and rewrite custom schemas without resorting to generic approaches.
If you must allow site users/administrators to directly define their data, I'm sure others will show you how to do the first two approaches above. The third approach is what you were asking for, and a bit more crazy, I'll show you how to do. I don't recommend using it in almost all cases, but sometimes it's appropriate.
Dynamic models
Once you know what to do, this is relatively straightforward. You'll need:
1 or 2 models to store the names and types of the fields
(optional) An abstract model to define common functionality for your (subclassed) dynamic models
A function to build (or rebuild) the dynamic model when needed
Code to build or update the database tables when fields are added/removed/renamed
1. Storing the model definition
This is up to you. I imagine you'll have a model CustomCarModel and CustomField to let the user/admin define and store the names and types of the fields you want. You don't have to mirror Django fields directly, you can make your own types that the user may understand better.
Use a forms.ModelForm with inline formsets to let the user build their custom class.
2. Abstract model
Again, this is straightforward, just create a base model with the common fields/methods for all your dynamic models. Make this model abstract.
3. Build a dynamic model
Define a function that takes the required information (maybe an instance of your class from #1) and produces a model class. This is a basic example:
from django.db.models.loading import cache
from django.db import models
def get_custom_car_model(car_model_definition):
""" Create a custom (dynamic) model class based on the given definition.
"""
# What's the name of your app?
_app_label = 'myapp'
# you need to come up with a unique table name
_db_table = 'dynamic_car_%d' % car_model_definition.pk
# you need to come up with a unique model name (used in model caching)
_model_name = "DynamicCar%d" % car_model_definition.pk
# Remove any exist model definition from Django's cache
try:
del cache.app_models[_app_label][_model_name.lower()]
except KeyError:
pass
# We'll build the class attributes here
attrs = {}
# Store a link to the definition for convenience
attrs['car_model_definition'] = car_model_definition
# Create the relevant meta information
class Meta:
app_label = _app_label
db_table = _db_table
managed = False
verbose_name = 'Dynamic Car %s' % car_model_definition
verbose_name_plural = 'Dynamic Cars for %s' % car_model_definition
ordering = ('my_field',)
attrs['__module__'] = 'path.to.your.apps.module'
attrs['Meta'] = Meta
# All of that was just getting the class ready, here is the magic
# Build your model by adding django database Field subclasses to the attrs dict
# What this looks like depends on how you store the users's definitions
# For now, I'll just make them all CharFields
for field in car_model_definition.fields.all():
attrs[field.name] = models.CharField(max_length=50, db_index=True)
# Create the new model class
model_class = type(_model_name, (CustomCarModelBase,), attrs)
return model_class
4. Code to update the database tables
The code above will generate a dynamic model for you, but won't create the database tables. I recommend using South for table manipulation. Here are a couple of functions, which you can connect to pre/post-save signals:
import logging
from south.db import db
from django.db import connection
def create_db_table(model_class):
""" Takes a Django model class and create a database table, if necessary.
"""
table_name = model_class._meta.db_table
if (connection.introspection.table_name_converter(table_name)
not in connection.introspection.table_names()):
fields = [(f.name, f) for f in model_class._meta.fields]
db.create_table(table_name, fields)
logging.debug("Creating table '%s'" % table_name)
def add_necessary_db_columns(model_class):
""" Creates new table or relevant columns as necessary based on the model_class.
No columns or data are renamed or removed.
XXX: May need tweaking if db_column != field.name
"""
# Create table if missing
create_db_table(model_class)
# Add field columns if missing
table_name = model_class._meta.db_table
fields = [(f.column, f) for f in model_class._meta.fields]
db_column_names = [row[0] for row in connection.introspection.get_table_description(connection.cursor(), table_name)]
for column_name, field in fields:
if column_name not in db_column_names:
logging.debug("Adding field '%s' to table '%s'" % (column_name, table_name))
db.add_column(table_name, column_name, field)
And there you have it! You can call get_custom_car_model() to deliver a django model, which you can use to do normal django queries:
CarModel = get_custom_car_model(my_definition)
CarModel.objects.all()
Problems
Your models are hidden from Django until the code creating them is run. You can however run get_custom_car_model for every instance of your definitions in the class_prepared signal for your definition model.
ForeignKeys/ManyToManyFields may not work (I haven't tried)
You will want to use Django's model cache so you don't have to run queries and create the model every time you want to use this. I've left this out above for simplicity
You can get your dynamic models into the admin, but you'll need to dynamically create the admin class as well, and register/reregister/unregister appropriately using signals.
Overview
If you're fine with the added complication and problems, enjoy! One it's running, it works exactly as expected thanks to Django and Python's flexibility. You can feed your model into Django's ModelForm to let the user edit their instances, and perform queries using the database's fields directly. If there is anything you don't understand in the above, you're probably best off not taking this approach (I've intentionally not explained what some of the concepts are for beginners). Keep it Simple!
I really don't think many people need this, but I have used it myself, where we had lots of data in the tables and really, really needed to let the users customise the columns, which changed rarely.
Database
Consider your database design once more.
You should think in terms of how those objects that you want to represent relate to each other in the real world and then try to generalize those relations as much as you can, (so instead of saying each truck has a permit, you say each vehicle has an attribute which can be either a permit, load amount or whatever).
So lets try it:
If you say you have a vehicle and each vehicle can have many user specified attributes consider the following models:
class Attribute(models.Model):
type = models.CharField()
value = models.CharField()
class Vehicle(models.Model):
attribute = models.ManyToMany(Attribute)
As noted before, this is a general idea which enables you to add as much attributes to each vehicle as you want.
If you want specific set of attributes to be available to the user you can use choices in the Attribute.type field.
ATTRIBUTE_CHOICES = (
(1, 'Permit'),
(2, 'Manufacturer'),
)
class Attribute(models.Model):
type = models.CharField(max_length=1, choices=ATTRIBUTE_CHOICES)
value = models.CharField()
Now, perhaps you would want each vehicle sort to have it's own set of available attributes. This can be done by adding yet another model and set foreign key relations from both Vehicle and Attribute models to it.
class VehicleType(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
class Attribute(models.Model):
vehicle_type = models.ForeigngKey(VehicleType)
type = models.CharField()
value = models.CharField()
class Vehicle(models.Model):
vehicle_type = models.ForeigngKey(VehicleType)
attribute = models.ManyToMany(Attribute)
This way you have a clear picture of how each attribute relates to some vehicle.
Forms
Basically, with this database design, you would require two forms for adding objects into the database. Specifically a model form for a vehicle and a model formset for attributes. You could use jQuery to dynamically add more items on the Attribute formset.
Note
You could also separate Attribute class to AttributeType and AttributeValue so you don't have redundant attribute types stored in your database or if you want to limit the attribute choices for the user but keep the ability to add more types with Django admin site.
To be totally cool, you could use autocomplete on your form to suggest existing attribute types to the user.
Hint: learn more about database normalization.
Other solutions
As suggested in the previous answer by Stuart Marsh
On the other hand you could hard code your models for each vehicle type so that each vehicle type is represented by the subclass of the base vehicle and each subclass can have its own specific attributes but that solutions is not very flexible (if you require flexibility).
You could also keep JSON representation of additional object attributes in one database field but I am not sure this would be helpfull when querying attributes.
Here is my simple test in django shell- I just typed in and it seems work fine-
In [25]: attributes = {
"__module__": "lekhoni.models",
"name": models.CharField(max_length=100),
"address": models.CharField(max_length=100),
}
In [26]: Person = type('Person', (models.Model,), attributes)
In [27]: Person
Out[27]: class 'lekhoni.models.Person'
In [28]: p1= Person()
In [29]: p1.name= 'manir'
In [30]: p1.save()
In [31]: Person.objects.a
Person.objects.aggregate Person.objects.all Person.objects.annotate
In [32]: Person.objects.all()
Out[33]: [Person: Person object]
It seems very simple- not sure why it should not be a considered an option- Reflection is very common is other languages like C# or Java- Anyway I am very new to django things-
Are you talking about in a front end interface, or in the Django admin?
You can't create real fields on the fly like that without a lot of work under the hood. Each model and field in Django has an associated table and column in the database. To add new fields usually requires either raw sql, or migrations using South.
From a front end interface, you could create pseudo fields, and store them in a json format in a single model field.
For example, create an other_data text field in the model. Then allow users to create fields, and store them like {'userfield':'userdata','mileage':54}
But I think if you're using a finite class like vehicles, you would create a base model with the basic vehicle characteristics, and then create models that inherits from the base model for each of the vehicle types.
class base_vehicle(models.Model):
color = models.CharField()
owner_name = models.CharField()
cost = models.DecimalField()
class car(base_vehicle):
mileage = models.IntegerField(default=0)
etc
I have some newbie questions about Django.
I want to write a generic ticket-management system, where the administrator of the site should be able to add custom fields to a ticket. It seems that the database tables are generated on initialization, so it is not clear to me how to add custom fields at runtime.
One way is to have a long list of fields of different types, all nullable, and let the administrator rename/select the fields she needs. Is there a better design?
Thanks!
I'm currently in charge of maintaining a similar site where a treatment for a medical condition is listed and there can be arbitrary number of "cases" which are user-posted experiences for that treatment/condition combo attached.
The method my company used to set it up was to have an Entry object which would be analogous to the custom field you described, which has a Foreign Key referencing the treatment/condition to which it belongs.
Then when we want to get all the entries for a particular treatment/condition combo, we simply do an
Entry.objects.filter(condition=ID)
So, in your case, I would suggest having a Ticket model, and an "Entry" style model which contains a Foreign Key reference to the Ticket to which it belongs.
I would make something like the code below. Store extra attributes in an attribute model. Store the values in AttributeValue.
class Ticket(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
class Attribute(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
class AttributeValues(models.Model):
attribute = models.ForeignKey(Attribute)
ticket = models.ForeignKey(Ticket)
value = models.CharField(max_length=200)