Django model clean and ManytoMany problem - django

I want to check my Foo instance if it belongs to a category yet my category is a many to many attribute thus I get "'Foo' instance needs to have a primary key value before a many-to-many relationship can be used." once I try such:
class Category(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=120)
class Movie (models.Model):
poster = models.ImageField(blank=True)
categories = models.ManyToManyField(Category)
def clean(self):
try:
self.categories.all().get(db_name="special")
self.poster.url = u'/media/special_img.png'
except Category.DoesNotExist:
pass

You can't check if Foo belongs to a category yet until you save it. But since it isn't saved anyway, you can be sure that it doesn't belong to a category yet.
One way to check wheter it has been saved already is by using if foo.pk. The pk is the primary key and it will be None if it hasn't been saved yet.

Related

Create an object that has a ForeignKey with another object

Assume that I have two models:
class Category(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
class Product(models.Model):
category = models.ForeignKey(Category, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
What I wanna accomplish is creating a Product object.
Assume I'll receive category_id from the POST request
>>> category = Category.objects.get(id=category_id)
>>> Product.objects.create(category=category, title='Send the category object')
>>> Product.objects.create(category_id=category_id, title='Send only category id')
As you can see, there are two options, the first is to send category instance to create() method and the second is to send category_id, so my question is which approach is better for performance?
I know that I need to check if that category exists in the DB or not but this is not the case that I'm talking about in the question.
If you have the primary key (category_id) there is no need to fetch the category first, you thus can use:
Product.objects.create(category_id=category_id, title='Send only category id')
which will thus only make one query: a query to create the Product, and thus will avoid querying for the category.
The two .create(…)s will make exactly the same query since Django will simply retrieve the .id of the category object, and make the query with that id.
I know that I need to check if that category exists in the DB or not but this is not the case that I'm talking about in the question.
No, if one would make a request with a category_id for which there is no record for the table behind the Category model, it will raise an IntegrityError: the database will normally ensure that ForeignKeys always point to valid items, so the Category.objects.get(id=category_id) is not necessary: if you are only fetching it to fetch the category, you can omit that.

Trouble overriding save method on Django model with ManyToManyField

I'm having trouble overriding the save method on a Django model to check a restriction on a many-to-many field.
Say I have the following models:
class Person(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
class ClothingItem(models.Model):
description = models.CharField()
owner = models.ForeignKey(Person)
class Outfit(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
owner = models.ForeignKey(Person)
clothing_items = models.ManyToManyField(ClothingItem)
I would like to put a restriction on the save method of Outfit that ensures that each ClothingItem in a given outfit has the same owner as the Outfit itself.
I.e. I'd like to write:
class Outfit(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
owner = models.ForeignKey(Person)
clothing_items = models.ManyToManyField(ClothingItem)
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
for ci in self.clothing_items:
if ci.owner != self.owner:
raise ValueError('You can only put your own items in an outfit!)
super(Outfit, self).save(*args, **kwargs)
but when I try that I get an error about <Outfit: SundayBest>" needs to have a value for field "outfit" before this many-to-many relationship can be used.
Any ideas what's going wrong here?
There are two issues going on here. To directly answer your question, the error basically means: You cannot refer to any m2m relationship if the original object(an instance of Outfit here) is not saved in database.
Sounds like you are trying to do the validation in save() method, which is a pretty bad practice in django. The verification process should typically happen in Form that creates Outfit objects. To override default django form, please refer to django ModelAdmin.form. To understand how to do validation on django forms, check ModelForm validation.
If you want code to refer to for m2m validation, I found a good example from SO.

django error while updating only one field in model

I want to update only one field in my model. However, I am getting an error.
This is my model:
class People(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
lastname = models.CharField(max_length=100)
class Salary(models.Model):
id_of_people=models.ForeignKey(People)
salary = models.IntegerField(required=False)
In views.py
-When I try this one to update :
def update(request):
a=Salary.objects.get(id_of_people_id=1)
a.salary=500
Salary().save()
My Error says:
IntegrityError at/update
salary.id_of_people_id may not be NULL
and traceback indicates:
Salary().save()
-When I try this one :
def update(request):
a=Salary.objects.get(id_of_people_id=1)
a.salary=500
Salary().save(save_fields=['salary'])
-I get this error:
save() got an unexpected keyword argument 'save_fields'
Can you please help me to update only one field in my table ?
In both of those cases you'll want to call save on the model instance you've created, not the model class--that is, you should be saving a, not Salary:
a.salary=500
a.save()
When you do Salary().save(), what's happening is that you create a brand new, empty model instance, and then try to commit that to the database, rather than committing the one that you had just modified.
If a ForeignKey is defined in your model, the contraint will be enforced at the db level so you will need to save the object reference by the Foreign key before you save the referring object.
You may also want to reconsider whether or not the foreign keys should be defined in person or Salary.
If you were to define the model like this:
class Person(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
lastname = models.CharField(max_length=100)
salary = models.ForeignKey(Salary)
class Salary(models.Model):
amount = models.IntegerField(required=False)
Then you could define your views function so that it looks like this:
def update(request):
s = Salary(amount=request.POST['salary'])
s.save()
p = Person(name=request.POST['name'], lastname=request.POST['lastname'], salary=s)
p.save()
The nice about this is that you could then reference the salary from a Person instance:
Person.objects.get(pk=1).salary.amount
I can't help but ask the question though why you really need these in separate objects. Things might be simpler if your model looked like this:
class Person(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
lastname = models.CharField(max_length=100)
salary = models.IntegerField(required=False)

Setting default value for Foreign Key attribute

What is the best way to set a default value for a foreign key field in a model? Suppose I have two models, Student and Exam with student having exam_taken as foreign key. How would I ideally set a default value for it? Here's a log of my effort
class Student(models.Model):
....
.....
exam_taken = models.ForeignKey("Exam", default=1)
Works, but have a hunch there's a better way.
def get_exam():
return Exam.objects.get(id=1)
class Student(models.Model):
....
.....
exam_taken = models.ForeignKey("Exam", default=get_exam)
But this fails with tables does not exist error while syncing.
Any help would be appreciated.
I would modify #vault's answer above slightly (this may be a new feature). It is definitely desirable to refer to the field by a natural name. However instead of overriding the Manager I would simply use the to_field param of ForeignKey:
class Country(models.Model):
sigla = models.CharField(max_length=5, unique=True)
def __unicode__(self):
return u'%s' % self.sigla
class City(models.Model):
nome = models.CharField(max_length=64, unique=True)
nation = models.ForeignKey(Country, to_field='sigla', default='IT')
As already implied in #gareth's answer, hard-coding a default id value might not always be the best idea:
If the id value does not exist in the database, you're in trouble. Even if that specific id value does exist, the corresponding object may change. In any case, when using a hard-coded id value, you'd have to resort to things like data-migrations or manual editing of existing database content.
To prevent that, you could use get_or_create() in combination with a unique field (other than id).
Here's one way to do it:
from django.db import models
class Exam(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=255, unique=True)
description = models.CharField(max_length=255)
#classmethod
def get_default_pk(cls):
exam, created = cls.objects.get_or_create(
title='default exam',
defaults=dict(description='this is not an exam'),
)
return exam.pk
class Student(models.Model):
exam_taken = models.ForeignKey(
to=Exam, on_delete=models.CASCADE, default=Exam.get_default_pk
)
Here an Exam.title field is used to get a unique object, and an Exam.description field illustrates how we can use the defaults argument (for get_or_create) to fully specify the default Exam object.
Note that we return a pk, as suggested by the docs:
For fields like ForeignKey that map to model instances, defaults should be the value of the field they reference (pk unless to_field is set) instead of model instances.
Also note that default callables are evaluated in Model.__init__() (source). So, if your default value depends on another field of the same model, or on the request context, or on the state of the client-side form, you should probably look elsewhere.
I use natural keys to adopt a more natural approach:
<app>/models.py
from django.db import models
class CountryManager(models.Manager):
"""Enable fixtures using self.sigla instead of `id`"""
def get_by_natural_key(self, sigla):
return self.get(sigla=sigla)
class Country(models.Model):
objects = CountryManager()
sigla = models.CharField(max_length=5, unique=True)
def __unicode__(self):
return u'%s' % self.sigla
class City(models.Model):
nome = models.CharField(max_length=64, unique=True)
nation = models.ForeignKey(Country, default='IT')
In my case, I wanted to set the default to any existing instance of the related model. Because it's possible that the Exam with id 1 has been deleted, I've done the following:
class Student(models.Model):
exam_taken = models.ForeignKey("Exam", blank=True)
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
try:
self.exam_taken
except:
self.exam_taken = Exam.objects.first()
super().save(*args, **kwargs)
If exam_taken doesn't exist, django.db.models.fields.related_descriptors.RelatedObjectDoesNotExist will be raised when a attempting to access it.
The issue with most of these approaches are that they use HARD CODED values or lambda methods inside the Model which are not supported anymore since Django Version 1.7.
In my opinion, the best approach here is to use a sentinel method which can also be used for the on_delete argument.
So, in your case, I would do
# Create or retrieve a placeholder
def get_sentinel_exam():
return Exam.objects.get_or_create(name="deleted",grade="N/A")[0]
# Create an additional method to return only the id - default expects an id and not a Model object
def get_sentinel_exam_id():
return get_sentinel_exam().id
class Exam(models.Model):
....
# Making some madeup values
name=models.CharField(max_length=200) # "English", "Chemistry",...
year=models.CharField(max_length=200) # "2012", "2022",...
class Student(models.Model):
....
.....
exam_taken = models.ForeignKey("Exam",
on_delete=models.SET(get_sentinel_exam),
default=get_sentinel_exam_id
)
Now, when you just added the exam_taken field uses a guaranteed existing value while also, when deleting the exam, the Student themself are not deleted and have a foreign key to a deleted value.
You could use this pattern:
class Other(models.Model):
DEFAULT_PK=1
name=models.CharField(max_length=1024)
class FooModel(models.Model):
other=models.ForeignKey(Other, default=Other.DEFAULT_PK)
Of course you need to be sure that there is a row in the table of Other. You should use a datamigration to be sure it exists.
I'm looking for the solution in Django Admin, then I found this:
class YourAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin)
def get_changeform_initial_data(self, request):
return {'owner': request.user}
this also allows me to use the current user.
see django docs
the best way I know is to use lambdas
class TblSearchCase(models.Model):
weights = models.ForeignKey('TblSearchWeights', models.DO_NOTHING, default=lambda: TblSearchWeights.objects.get(weight_name='value_you_want'))
so you can specify the default row..
default=lambda: TblSearchWeights.objects.get(weight_name='value_you_want')

Django: making relationships in memory without saving to DB

I have some models with relationships like this:
class Item(model.Model):
name = models.CharField()
class Group(models.Model):
item = models.ManyToManyField(Item)
class Serie(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
chart = models.ForeignKey(Chart)
group = models.ForeignKey(Group)
class Chart(models.Model):
name = models.CharField()
I need to create a Chart object on the fly, without saving to the DB. But I can't do it because Django tries to use the objects primary keys when assigning the relationships.
I just want Group.add(Item()) to work without having to save the objects to the DB.
Is there any simple way around this?
Reviving here for the sake of future readers:
I've gotten around this use case by defining a private attribute that represents the relationship inside the classes and a property to inspect wether the object can be retrieved from the DB or resides in memory.
Here is a simple example:
class Parent(models.Model):
_children = []
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
#property
def children(self):
if _children:
return self._children
else:
return self.children_set.all()
def set_virtual_children(self, value): # could use a setter for children
self._children = value # Expose _children to modification
def some_on_the_fly_operation(self):
print(','.join([c.name for c in self.children]))
class Children(models.Model):
parent = models.ForeignKey(Parent)
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
This way, I can set the "virtual children" and use all the defined methods "on the fly"
EDIT: It seems that approach described here isn't enough for django to allow adding to the ManyToMany relationship.
Have you tried to add primary_key=True and unique=True to the name attribute of the Item model. Then doing Group.add(Item("item_name_here")) should work if you have the possibility to create the name on the fly.
I didn't test it, but I think your way failed because add() wants to use the primary-key which by default is the autoincrementing id that is assigned when it is saved to the database.