I'm implementing a bare-bones history tracking mechanism for my Django app, in which the models I care to track override the save() and delete() methods. In each method, I create my history objects as necessary:
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
super(MyModel, self).save(*args, **kwargs)
# Create the historical model based on what we were given
h = Historical_MyModel(**{field.attname: getattr(self, field.attname) for field in self._meta.fields})
# Set some other fields as necessary...
h.save()
Since the code for each save() and delete() method is similar, I figured a good way to prevent typing the same code is to create an abstract base class to have the similar code in one place. One thing I'm struggling with, however, is how to handle creating the Historical_{Model} instance for each child class (each Historical_{Model} is essentially a copy of the original model, with additional info like who made the change, when the change occurred, etc.).
In my base class, the method would look something like this, I think:
class HistoryTrackedModel(models.Model):
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
super(self.model, self).save(*args, **kwargs)
# Create the historical model based on what we were given
h = SOME_HISTORICAL_MODEL_INSTANCE(**{field.attname: getattr(self, field.attname) for field in self._meta.fields})
# Other fields get set ...
h.save()
class Meta:
abstract = True
The SOME_HISTORICAL_MODEL_INSTANCE bit above is the piece I'm stuck on. How can I get the associated historical model for a specific model I'm tracking? Is there an easy way to store a reference to it in each child class? I'd like to prevent code duplication, and I thought this was the right avenue, but I'm stuck on this one point. Any help would be appreciated.
I think the most straightforward way would be to store the value as a class attribute:
class HistoricalFoo(models.Model):
...
class Foo(HistoryTrackedModel):
history_model = HistoricalFoo
....
class HistoryTrackedModel(models.Model):
def save(self):
...
h = self.history_model(...)
An alternative would be to generate the historical model names programmatically:
class HistoryTrackedModel(models.Model):
def save(self):
...
history_model = globals()["Historical" + self.__class__.__name__]
h = history_model(...)
Related
Having these kind of model definitions and a relationship between the two:
class Car(models.Model):
description = models.CharField(max_length=35)
def save(self, **kwargs):
invalidate_cache()
super().save(**kwargs)
def delete(self, **kwargs):
invalidate_cache()
return super().delete(**kwargs)
class Passenger(models.Model):
car = models.ForeignKey(Car, related_name='passengers')
I have defined custom save and delete on the Car model because when a car instance is modified I have to perform some extra operations, in particular I need to invalidate a cache.
My doubt is: creating/updating/deleting a related model would call these custom methods?
I'll try to be more clear:
c1 = Car(description='super fast car')
p = Passenger(car=c1)
Clearly the creation of the c1 calls the Car.save but would the creation of the instance p of Passenger call the Car.save or not?
From my tests it seems so but I want to be more sure it wasn't just a specific case and this happens all the time in the Django model handling cycle (I could not find a specific documentation on this).
In a Django model, I want to avoid doubles so I wrote this:
class Points(TimeStampedModel):
....
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
if self.pk:
super(Points, self).save(*args, **kwargs)
else: # save() is a creation here, not an update
if Points.objects.filter(benef_card=self.benef_card,
spendable_at=self.spendable_at).exists():
pass
else:
super(Points, self).save(*args, **kwargs)
I was very surprised to find this result in my database:
I suppose there is something wrong with my code, but I'd like to know how these doubles could exist inspite of the protection I wrote in my save() method?
I think what you want instead is:
class Points(TimeStampedModel):
# ...
class Meta:
unique_together = ('benef_card', 'spendable_at')
Then you don't need to override save -- the uniqueness will be handled by a DB constraint and it is generally the way to go. This approach is better because save is not always called (example: bulk operations) so you might get different behavior across your app.
You might also want to check out update_or_create which just returns an object with attributes you need, creating it if it doesn't exist.
You could use Django signals instead to check before save.
I am using an approach similar to T. Stone's answer on this question. However, I have added an abstract base class, so my models.py looks like this:
class CustomQuerySetManager(models.Manager):
"""A re-usable Manager to access a custom QuerySet"""
def __getattr__(self, attr, *args):
try:
return getattr(self.__class__, attr, *args)
except AttributeError:
return getattr(self.get_query_set(), attr, *args)
def get_query_set(self):
return self.model.QuerySet(self.model)
class MyModel(models.Model):
class Meta:
abstract = True
class QuerySet(QuerySet):
def user(self, pub, *args, **kwargs):
return self.filter(publisher=pub, *args, **kwargs)
...some more methods here
class Book(MyModel):
title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
authors = models.ManyToManyField(Author, related_name='book_author')
publisher = models.ForeignKey(Publisher)
publication_date = models.DateField()
objects=models.Manager()
obj=CustomQuerySetManager() #for testing purposes only, this will override objects later
This allows me to get all of the books for a given publisher like such:
p = Publisher.object.get(pk=1)
Book.obj.user(p).all()
I would like to extend this so I can define a custom query in the Book model then pass a Q object to the QuerySet class, so the query "publisher=pub" can be different for different models. I still want to be able to call this like Book.obj.user(p).all(). Somewhere in the Book model I need:
pubQ=Q(publisher=pub)
Where can I put this and how do I pass it to QuerySet defined in the Abstract Base Class, while keeping the code as DRY as possible?
That answer is clever, but it breaks the Python principle of "explicit is better than implicit". My first reaction to your code was to tell you that you can't declare a custom queryset inside your model, but I decided to check the mentioned SO answer to see where you got that idea from. Again, it's clever -- not discounting that, but well-written code is self-documenting and should be able to be picked up by any random Django developer and ran with. That's where peer code-reviews come in handy -- had you had one, you'd have instantly got a WTF with that.
The Django core team does it the following way:
class MyQuerySet(models.query.QuerySet):
def some_method(self, an_arg, another_arg, a_kwarg='some_value'):
# do something
return a_queryset
class MyManager(models.Manager):
def get_query_set(self):
return MyQuerySet(self.model)
def some_method(self, *args, **kwargs):
return self.get_query_set().some_method(*args, **kwargs)
It's DRY in the sense that you don't repeat the actual method definition in the manager. But, it's also explicit -- you know exactly what's going on. It's not as DRY as the method you're referencing, but "explicit is better than implicit". Besides if it's done that way in the actual Django codebase, you can be reasonably assured that it's good practice to do so in your own code. And, it has the side-effect of making it much easier to extend and override in subclasses.
I have a field (slug) that is "required" in the model, but want to change the field in the ModelAdmin class to be optional. If the user doesn't fill it in, it is automatically filled in by another field (name).
class SomeModel(model.Model):
name = model.CharField(max_length=255)
slug = model.SlugField(unique=True, max_length=255)
I tried to do this various ways, such as overriding get_form() within ModelAdmin or using the ModelForm class and specifying the form specifically.
class SomeModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
def get_form(self, request, obj=None, **kwargs):
form = super(self.__class__, self).get_form(request, obj, **kwargs)
form.slug.required = False
return form
However, neither solution worked for me. Beyond manually creating the form, is there any other quicker solution?
I have a lot of these forms, and doing it by hand might be tedious and hard to maintain.
Found this page through Google when wrestling with the same problem myself. The following will also work in the ModelAdmin:
def get_form(self, *args, **kwargs):
form = super(SomeModelAdmin, self).get_form(*args, **kwargs)
form.base_fields['slug'].required = False
return form
Subsequent forms created from the updated ModelFormMetaclass will have the slug field unrequired.
This works better in my situation, where I have only a single class in which I need to unrequire the field, and don't need to do any data transformation on save. GoogleDroid's solution is better if you have a lot of classes, or where the data transformations are necessary.
In your get_form method, form.fields['slug'].required should work.
But the proper way to do this is to simply provide a custom ModelForm.
class SomeModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
slug = forms.CharField(required=False)
class SomeModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
form = SomeModelForm
Incidentally, please don't do super(self.__class__, self). You should always explicitly name the current class when using super, otherwise any subclass that inherits from yours and in turn calls super will break.
Edit form.fields, not forms.fields.
By saying self.__class__, you are explicitly stopping Python from working out the inheritance - because it always refers to the concrete class - ie the bottom of the inheritance tree. But if your method is the middle of that tree, then referring to the concrete class in super is wrong - because you want it to call the next level up from where you are, not one up from the bottom. That's why you should always name the class you're in - in this case, super(SomeModelAdmin, self).
I just wanted to report back in case others might find this useful.
I was never able to in get_form method do form.fields['slug'].required and never figured out why. However, I solved my problem by creating a new form inheriting from ModelForm.
I had to override init() to set self.fields['slug'].required = False after calling the parent constructor, then override clean_slug() to modify the slug field content if required by accessing self.data['slug'].
Hope this helps someone
Is there explicit support for Single Table Inheritance in Django? Last I heard, the feature was still under development and debate.
Are there libraries/hacks I can use in the meantime to capture the basic behavior? I have a hierarchy that mixes different objects. The canonical example of a corporation structure with an Employee class, subclasses for types of employees, and a manager_id (parent_id) would be a good approximation of the problem I am solving.
In my case, I would like to represent the idea that an employee can manage other employees while being managed by a different employee. There are not separate classes for Manager and Worker, which makes this hard to spread across tables. Sub-classes would represent types of employees-programmers, accountants, sales, etc and would be independent of who supervises who (OK, I guess it's no longer a typical corporation in some respect).
Summary
Django's proxy models provide the basis for Single Table Inheritance.
However, some effort is required to make it work.
Skip to the end for a re-usable example.
Background
Martin Fowler describes Single Table Inheritance (STI) as follows:
Single Table Inheritance maps all fields of all classes of an inheritance structure into a single table.
This is precisely what Django's proxy model inheritance does.
Note, that, according to this blog post from 2010, proxy models have been around since Django 1.1.
A "normal" Django model is a concrete model, i.e. it has a dedicated table in the database.
There are two types of Django model that do not have dedicated database tables, viz. abstract models and proxy models:
Abstract models act as superclasses for concrete models. An abstract model can define fields, but it does not have a database table. The fields are only added to the database tables for its concrete subclasses.
Proxy models act as subclasses for concrete models. A proxy model cannot define new fields. Instead, it operates on the database table associated with its concrete superclass. In other words, a Django concrete model and its proxies all share a single table.
Django's proxy models provide the basis for Single Table Inheritance, viz. they allow different models to share a single table, and they allow us to define proxy-specific behavior on the Python side. However, Django's default object-relational mapping (ORM) does not provide all the behavior that would be expected, so a little customization is required. How much, that depends on your needs.
Let's build a minimal example, step by step, based on the simple data-model in the figure below:
Step 1: basic "proxy model inheritance"
Here's the content of models.py for a basic proxy inheritance implementation:
from django.db import models
class Party(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
person_attribute = models.CharField(max_length=20)
organization_attribute = models.CharField(max_length=20)
class Person(Party):
class Meta:
proxy = True
class Organization(Party):
class Meta:
proxy = True
Person and Organization are two types of parties.
Only the Party model has a database table, so all the fields are defined on this model, including any fields that are specific either to Person or to Organization.
Because Party, Person, and Organization all use the Party database table, we can define a single ForeignKey field to Party, and assign instances of any of the three models to that field, as implied by the inheritance relation in the figure. Note, that, without inheritance, we would need a separate ForeignKey field for each model.
For example, suppose we define an Address model as follows:
class Address(models.Model):
party = models.ForeignKey(to=Party, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
We can then initialize an Address object using e.g. Address(party=person_instance) or Address(party=organization_instance).
So far, so good.
However, if we try to get a list of objects corresponding to a proxy model, using e.g. Person.objects.all(), we get a list of all Party objects instead, i.e. both Person objects and Organization objects. This is because the proxy models still use the model manager from the superclass (i.e. Party).
Step 2: add proxy model managers
To make sure that Person.objects.all() only returns Person objects, we need to assign a separate model manager that filters the Party queryset. To enable this filtering, we need a field that indicates which proxy model should be used for the object.
To be clear: creating a Person object implies adding a row to the Party table. The same goes for Organization. To distinguish between the two, we need a column to indicate if a row represents a Person or an Organization. For convenience and clarity, we add a field (i.e. column) called proxy_name, and use that to store the name of the proxy class.
So, enter the ProxyManager model manager and the proxy_name field:
from django.db import models
class ProxyManager(models.Manager):
def get_queryset(self):
return super().get_queryset().filter(proxy_name=self.model.__name__)
class Party(models.Model):
proxy_name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
person_attribute = models.CharField(max_length=20)
organization_attribute = models.CharField(max_length=20)
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.proxy_name = type(self).__name__
super().save(*args, **kwargs)
class Person(Party):
class Meta:
proxy = True
objects = ProxyManager()
class Organization(Party):
class Meta:
proxy = True
objects = ProxyManager()
Now the queryset returned by Person.objects.all() will only contain Person objects (and the same for Organization).
However, this does not work in the case of a ForeignKey relation to Party, as in Address.party above, because that will always return a Party instance, regardless of the value of the proxy_name field (also see docs). For example, suppose we create an address = Address(party=person_instance), then address.party will return a Party instance, instead of a Person instance.
Step 3: extend the Party constructor
One way to deal with the related-field issue is to extend the Party.__new__ method, so it returns an instance of the class specified in the 'proxy_name' field. The end result looks like this:
class Party(models.Model):
PROXY_FIELD_NAME = 'proxy_name'
proxy_name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
person_attribute = models.CharField(max_length=20)
organization_attribute = models.CharField(max_length=20)
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
""" automatically store the proxy class name in the database """
self.proxy_name = type(self).__name__
super().save(*args, **kwargs)
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
party_class = cls
try:
# get proxy name, either from kwargs or from args
proxy_name = kwargs.get(cls.PROXY_FIELD_NAME)
if proxy_name is None:
proxy_name_field_index = cls._meta.fields.index(
cls._meta.get_field(cls.PROXY_FIELD_NAME))
proxy_name = args[proxy_name_field_index]
# get proxy class, by name, from current module
party_class = getattr(sys.modules[__name__], proxy_name)
finally:
return super().__new__(party_class)
Now address.party will actually return a Person instance if the proxy_name field is Person.
As a last step, we can make the whole thing re-usable:
Step 4: make it re-usable
To make our rudimentary Single-Table Inheritance implementation re-usable, we can use Django's abstract inheritance:
inheritance/models.py:
import sys
from django.db import models
class ProxySuper(models.Model):
class Meta:
abstract = True
proxy_name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
""" automatically store the proxy class name in the database """
self.proxy_name = type(self).__name__
super().save(*args, **kwargs)
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
""" create an instance corresponding to the proxy_name """
proxy_class = cls
try:
field_name = ProxySuper._meta.get_fields()[0].name
proxy_name = kwargs.get(field_name)
if proxy_name is None:
proxy_name_field_index = cls._meta.fields.index(
cls._meta.get_field(field_name))
proxy_name = args[proxy_name_field_index]
proxy_class = getattr(sys.modules[cls.__module__], proxy_name)
finally:
return super().__new__(proxy_class)
class ProxyManager(models.Manager):
def get_queryset(self):
""" only include objects in queryset matching current proxy class """
return super().get_queryset().filter(proxy_name=self.model.__name__)
Then we can implement our inheritance structure as follows:
parties/models.py:
from django.db import models
from inheritance.models import ProxySuper, ProxyManager
class Party(ProxySuper):
name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
person_attribute = models.CharField(max_length=20)
organization_attribute = models.CharField(max_length=20)
class Person(Party):
class Meta:
proxy = True
objects = ProxyManager()
class Organization(Party):
class Meta:
proxy = True
objects = ProxyManager()
class Placement(models.Model):
party = models.ForeignKey(to=Party, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
More work may be required, depending on your needs, but I believe this covers some of the basics.
I think the OP is asking about Single-Table Inheritance as defined here:
Relational databases don't support inheritance, so when mapping from objects to databases we have to consider how to represent our nice inheritance structures in relational tables. When mapping to a relational database, we try to minimize the joins that can quickly mount up when processing an inheritance structure in multiple tables. Single Table Inheritance maps all fields of all classes of an inheritance structure into a single table.
That is, a single database table for a whole hierarchy of entity classes. Django does not support that kind of inheritance.
There are currently two forms of inheritance in Django - MTI (model table inheritance) and ABC (abstract base classes).
I wrote a tutorial on what's going on under the hood.
You can also reference the official docs on model inheritance.
See my attempt:
http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/2408/
An emulation of "table per hierarchy" a.k.a. "single table inheritance" in Django. The base class must hold all the fields. It's subclasses are not allowed to contain any additional fields and optimally they should be proxies.
Not exactly "single table inheritance", but close enough for many situations.
this might be of use: https://github.com/craigds/django-typed-models
It looks to be somewhat of an implementation of Single Table Inheritance but it has the limitation that subclasses can't have any extra fields.
here is a recent discussion on the django developer mailing list about STI:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/django-developers/-UOM8HNUnxg/6k34kopzerEJ
I think you can do something akin to this.
I have to implement a solution for this problem myself, and here was how I solved it:
class Citrus(models.Model):
how_acidic = models.PositiveIntegerField(max_value=100)
skin_color = models.CharField()
type = models.CharField()
class TangeloManager(models.Manager):
def get_query_set(self):
return super(TangeloManager, self).get_query_set().filter(type='Tangelo')
class Tangelo(models.Model):
how_acidic = models.PositiveIntegerField(max_value=100)
skin_color = models.CharField()
type = models.CharField()
objects = TangeloManager()
class Meta:
# 'appname' below is going to vary with the name of your app
db_table = u'appname_citrus'
This may have some locking issues... I'm not really sure how django handles that off the top of my head. Also, I didn't really test the above code, it's strictly for entertainment purposes, to hopefully put you on the right track.