How to add a conditional field in a Django model? - python

Basically, what I want is a field to be available if a condition is met, so something like this:
class ConditionalModel(models.Model):
product = models.ForeignKey(product, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
if category == "laptop":
cpu_model = models.CharField(max_length=200)
so if I were to go to the Django admin page and create an instance of the model and then choose "laptop" as the product from the drop-down list of existing "products", a new field would be available. I couldn't find anything about this in the documentation, so I'm wondering whether it's even possible.

What you are asking for is not "technically" possible. A model relates a database object, and under traditional SQL rules, this isn't possible. You could instead make that field optional, and then customize the admin page's functionality.
Another potential option, though I do not have much experience with it, would be to use a NoSQL database in the case where you don't want to store NULL values in your db.

I do not think it is possible because models defines databases tables so the column has to be present.
You can use the keyword blank=True to allow an object without this field.
Maybe you can customize the admin interface to hide the field in some cases.

You can't do that in models.
You can hide it in admin panel or you can make separate model for laptop.
Or you can make field blank=True

Making a field optional is not possible but you can use a generalized model called Product and two or more specialized ones called for example : ElectronicProduct that contains the field cpu_model and NonElectronicProduct, the two specialized models have to contain a OneToOneField to the Product model to ensure inheritance.

Related

What is the best approach to bind multiple models to one ManyToMany field in Django?

I'm building a dashboard app that I would like the user to be able to customize. One of these customizable options would be the ability to choose different types of graphs to display data. My research into the best way to do this would be to use a ManyToMany field within my dashboard model; however, ManyToMany fields only allow 1 model--not multiple according to the docs:
A many-to-many relationship. Requires a positional argument: the class to which the model is related, which works exactly the same as it does for ForeignKey, including recursive and lazy relationships.
More research brought me to this SO post which recommended to create an intermediary 'ABCDRel' model that has foreign keys to each of the other models and emulate the behavior I'm looking for. The problem with that is I get this: as compared to what I'm looking for in this:
I use the admin page here to give a clearer picture of what I'm looking for.
Here's the intermediary I made according to the SO post above:
class GraphRelations(models.Model):
heatmap = models.ForeignKey(Heatmap, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='m2m')
bar = models.ForeignKey(Bar, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='m2m')
And the ManyToMany field I have in my dashboard model:
graphs = models.ManyToManyField(GraphRelations)
The only other option I can think of would be to add a foreign key to each graph model I have and set an 'enabled' field within that graph model. However, that's not very extensible and I feel there are cleaner ways to do this.
Any pointers are helpful!

Django user customization database tables

I am trying to build a Django website where the user is able to create custom objects known as items. Each item needs to be able to have certain properties that are stored in the database. For example an item would need properties such as
Serial Number,
Description,
Manufacture Date
However I want the user to be able to specify these fields similar to what Microsoft dynamics allows . For example a user should be able to specify they want a text field with the name Model Number, associated with a specific item type and from then on they can store those properties in the database.
I am not sure the best approach to do this because a standard database model, you already have all the fields defined for a specific table, however this essentially means i have to find a way to have user defined tables.
Does anyone know a good approach to handle this problem, at the end of the day I want to store items with custom properties as defined by the user in a database.
thanks
There are multiple ways you can go.
In non-relational databases you don't need to define all the fields for a collections ( analogous to a table of RDBMS).
But if you want to use SQL with Django, then you can define a Property Model.
class Property(models.Model):
name = CharField()
value = CharField()
item = models.ForeignKey(Item, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
class Item(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
You can render a FormSet of Property form. To add extra empty forms on the fly, render dynamic formsets.

How to generate indexes for related fields on Django models?

Say we're building a Django-based site that clones Medium.com's URL structure, where you have users and articles. We'd probably have this model:
class Article(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User)
slug = models.CharField()
We want to be able to build URLs that look like /<username>/<slug>/. Since we're going to have billions of articles and zillions of pageviews, we want to put an index on that model:
class Meta:
indexes = [
models.Index(fields=['user__username', 'slug'])
]
But this causes the makemigrations command to fail with the following error:
django.core.exceptions.FieldDoesNotExist: Article has no field named 'user__username'. The app cache isn't ready yet, so if this is an auto-created related field, it won't be available yet.
So, plain vanilla models.Index doesn't support relational lookups like a QuerySet does. How would I add an index like this? Let's assume PostgreSQL, if that's helpful.
It seems that you can't make multi-table index according to this answer.
So if it's not possible in the database, I don't see how can Django offer this feature...
What you can do to make your queries more efficients is an index using user_id and slug.
Django index meta class mainly provide declarative options for indexing table fields,
you can create an index using several field of a model or create different index for every fields of the model. you just don't have to provide user foriegnkey field name attribute which generate automatic user_id index migrations
migrations.AddIndex(
model_name='candidates',
index=models.Index(fields=['user'], name='candidates__user_id_569874_idx'),
),
you can also set the index name in the model meta, and db_tablspace as well if needed.

difference between ForeignKey and extending the User class/model in Django

Django: When extending User, better to use OneToOneField(User) or ForeignKey(User, unique=True)?
I went through this thread and found that ForeignKey(with unique=True) is better than OneToOneField, but what about extending the class itself, I.e. here is the example
class UserProfile(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User, unique=True)
# some additional fields
OR
class UserProfile(User):
# some additional fields
Difference between these two approaches and pros/cons and which one should I use?
EDIT:
I can use AbstractUser as well
from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser
class User(AbstractUser):
phone_no = models.CharField(max_length=10, blank=True)
and then mentioned AUTH_USER_MODEL = 'myapp.User' in settings.py
main concern is, what approach should I use, extending the class or ForeignKey ?
Duplicates:
What's the difference between OneToOne and Subclassing a model in Django
Django Model Inheritance versus OneToOne field
MORE EDIT
Forget about ForeginKey or OneToOne, assume only one of these two exist, now compare that with extending/subclassing approach
First, it is good to know there currently are several options how to extend the Django user model. Each has its purpose (but there is some overlap as well). Django docs are a bit confusing as it seems from this there are two options, i.e. proxy or OneToOneField. However this relates to the existing user model, as further on in the docs is dealt with custom user models.
So in practice there are four (common) ways to deal with extending the user model:
Proxy model (no new databasefields, just to change user model behavior, i.e. new ordering, new methods, etc.).
OneToOneField (extra datafields needed within existing Djang user model).
Custom user model with AbstractBaseUser (extra datafields
needed, and specific requirements regarding authenticaton process,
e.g. using emailaddress als id token instead of username).
Custom user model with AbstractUser (extra datafields needed, no
change to authentication).
Implementing option 3 and 4 a fresh database migration is needed, so these are only suitable for new projects.
This is a good link for more detail on this. I think option 2 and 4 are closest as both only want to extend to add more datafields. Writer seems in favor of option 2, but when starting a new project option 4 seems easier to me. Somewhere in the comments writer mentions risk of not being able to upgrade to new Django versions for option 3 and 4. Seems far-fetched to me, but I can't tell really.
There is no better way to do, the thing is if you do extend AbstractUser you need to redefine some functions so it may be longer but you have more control on what you wanna do with your user.
Make a OneToOne field on django default user is faster and also allow you to add your own user custom fields but you can use directly User default field in your custom object, and your custom field on the user :
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
class Employee(models.Model):
user = models.OneToOneField(User)
department = models.CharField(max_length=100)
You can do :
>>> u = User.objects.get(username='fsmith')
>>> freds_department = u.employee.department
So it really depends on what you want to do. You can do your User for example if you want to take the mail adress as the identification token (it's a common exmaple but you can do much more things :p).
Here is a good explanation (I place it on user but you can read the whole page it's pretty interesting when you dive into User and authentication into Django).
Hope it help.
I am skeptical about the benefits of a unique FK verses one-to-one, you could achieve a similar thing in the admin by using fieldsets so I would prefer to have an explicit one-to-one field on the model, making the nature of the relation more obvious.
The duplicate questions you linked to aren't specific to the auth User model and discuss one-to-one vs model inheritance generally. Technically they are both the same (i.e. model inheritance uses a one-to-one field)
So ultimately the choice comes down to semantics: is your related model a 'subclass' of the other, or just a link to further related info?
In the case of auth User you would ask yourself then: are there some extra fields that should be present for all users (eg gender, facebook id etc)? or some fields you want to omit from the Django User model (eg to use unique email address as username)?
In this case the obvious choice is to extend AbstractUser. If you can't imagine specifying null=True on your user profile model you should consider extending AbstractUser.
On the other hand there may be some data that is more analogous to the old UserProfile model (have a look how things were in old versions of Django before extending AbstractUser was supported: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/topics/auth/#storing-additional-information-about-users)
Perhaps for example you have different types of users who may or may not have certain extra sets of fields. In this case it may make sense to have a one-to-one link to one or more 'profile' models.

Django form to create several objects with one-to-one relation

I have several models with one-to-one relation. For example
class Task(models.Model):
initial_comment = models.OneToOneField('Comment')
# A pack of other fields
class Comment(models.Model)
body = RichTextField()
# A pack of other fields
I want to create "create view" based on form, that gives user ability to create task and initial comment there.
I can't use CreateView because it is based on only one model
I can't use ModelForm because it is based on only one model
I can create several forms, but I can't join them into one formset (forms are different)
I feel "inlineformset_factory" (InlineFormSet) should be used here, but I am not sure it suits best. Is there any 3rd party Django app to do that?
Sure I can create form myself, but I do not want to copy/paste all fields, their types, localized labels, validations and so on. I just want to list their names (like fields attibute).
I can also have 2 forms and support them everywhere and track dependencies manually (save comments first), like in How can create a model form in django with a one-to-one relation with another model , but I hope there has to be better solution.
If you wonder why do I need one-to-one: Comments are used heavily in other places and have different relations with different models.
The inline_formset factory is correct. There are no standard generic views for this, but there is a third party package with generic views to do what you are wanting. Its in the standard Django way of doing things.
https://github.com/AndrewIngram/django-extra-views
You probably want to use the CreateWithInlinesView for that.
Well, I found solution.
CreateWithInlinesView works perfectly with OneToOneField (after all, 1-to-1 is just a foreign key with constraint), but my main model here is Comment, not Task. So I should set Comment as model field in this view and Task as inline. It looks silly. I will create custom form or review my model structure.

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