Django model: manytomany with more than one object - django

Question

I have an Event model. Events can have many 'presenters'. But each presenter can either 1 of 2 different types of profiles. Profile1 and Profile2. How do I allow both profiles to go into presenters?
This will be 100% backend produced. As to say, admin will be selecting "presenters".
(Don't know if that matters or not).
class Profile1(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User, null=True, unique=True)
first_name = models.CharField(max_length=20, null=True, blank=True)
last_name = models.CharField(max_length=20, null=True, blank=True)
created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
modified = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
about = models.TextField(null=True, blank=True)
tags = models.ManyToManyField(Tag, null=True, blank=True)
country = CountryField()
avatar = models.ImageField(upload_to='avatars/users/', null=True, blank=True)
score = models.FloatField(default=0.0, null=False, blank=True)
organization = models.CharField(max_length=2, choices=organizations)
class Profile2(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User, null=True, unique=True)
first_name = models.CharField(max_length=20, null=True, blank=True)
last_name = models.CharField(max_length=20, null=True, blank=True)
created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
modified = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
about = models.TextField(null=True, blank=True)
tags = models.ManyToManyField(Tag, null=True, blank=True)
country = CountryField()
avatar = models.ImageField(upload_to='avatars/users/', null=True, blank=True)
score = models.FloatField(default=0.0, null=False, blank=True)
...
class Event(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
sub_heading = models.CharField(max_length=200)
presenters = ManyToManyField(Profile1, Profile2, blank=True, null=True) ?
...
# I've also tried:
profile1_presenters = models.ManyToManyField(Profile1, null=True, blank=True)
profile2_presenters = models.ManyToManyField(Profile2, null=True, blank=True)
# is there a better way to accomplish this?...

Answer 1

I think you have a desing problem here. In my opinion, you must think what is a Presenter and what's the different between a Presenter with "profile 1" and with "profile 2". What are you going to do with this models? Are you sure there are just two profiles? Is there any chance that, in some time from now, a different profile ("profile 3") appears? And profile 4? and profile N?
I recommend you to think again about your models and their relations. Do NOT make this decision thinking of how difficul/easy will be to handle these models from django admin. That's another problem and i'll bet that if you think your models a little bit, this won't be an issue later.
Nevertheless, i can give you some advice of how to acomplish what you want (or i hope so). Once you have think abount how to model these relations, start thinking on how are you going to write your models in django. Here are some questions you will have to answer to yourself:
Do you need one different table (if you are going to use SQL) per profile?
If you cannot answer that, try to answer these:
1) What's the difference between two different profiles?
2) Are there more than one profile?
3) Each presenter have just one profile? What are the chances that this property changes in near future?
I don't know a lot about what you need but i think the best option is to have a model "Profile" apart of your "Presenter" model. May be something like:
class Profile(models.Model):
first_profile_field = ...
second_profile_field = ...
# Each presenter have one profile. One profile can "represent"
# to none or more presenters
class Presenter(models.Model):
first_presenter_field = ....
second_presenter_field = ....
profile = models.ForeignKey(Profile)
class Event(models.Model):
presenters = models.ManyToManyField(Presenter)
....
This is just an idea of how i imagine you could design your model. Here are some links that may help you once you have design your models correctly and have answered the questions i made to you:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/db/models/#model-inheritance
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/misc/design-philosophies/#models
http://www.martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/activeRecord.html
And to work with the admin once you decide how your design will be:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/admin/
EDIT:
If i'm not wrong, the only difference between profile 1 and 2 fields is the "organization" field. Am i right? So i recommend you to merge both models since they are almost the same. If they have different methods, or you want to add different managers or whatever, you can use the proxy option of django models. For example, you can do this:
class Profile(models.Model):
#All the fields you listed above, including the "organization" field
class GoldenProfile(models.Model):
#you can define its own managers
objects = GoldenProfileManager()
....
class Meta:
proxy = True
class SilverProfile(models.Model):
....
class Meta:
proxy = True
This way, you can define different methods or the same method with a different behaviour in each model. You can give them their own managers, etcetera.
And the event class should stay like this:
class Event(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
sub_heading = models.CharField(max_length=200)
presenters = ManyToManyField(Profile, blank=True, null=True)
Hope it helps!