Model field reference
This document contains all the API references of Field
including the field options and field types Django offers.
See also
If the built-in fields don’t do the trick, you can try django-localflavor (documentation), which contains assorted pieces of code that are useful for particular countries and cultures.
Also, you can easily write your own custom model fields.
Note
Technically, these models are defined in django.db.models.fields
, but for convenience they’re imported into django.db.models
; the standard convention is to use from django.db import models
and refer to fields as models.<Foo>Field
.
Field options
The following arguments are available to all field types. All are optional.
null
-
Field.null
If True
, Django will store empty values as NULL
in the database. Default is False
.
Avoid using null
on string-based fields such as CharField
and TextField
. If a string-based field has null=True
, that means it has two possible values for “no data”: NULL
, and the empty string. In most cases, it’s redundant to have two possible values for “no data;” the Django convention is to use the empty string, not NULL
. One exception is when a CharField
has both unique=True
and blank=True
set. In this situation, null=True
is required to avoid unique constraint violations when saving multiple objects with blank values.
For both string-based and non-string-based fields, you will also need to set blank=True
if you wish to permit empty values in forms, as the null
parameter only affects database storage (see blank
).
Note
When using the Oracle database backend, the value NULL
will be stored to denote the empty string regardless of this attribute.
blank
-
Field.blank
If True
, the field is allowed to be blank. Default is False
.
Note that this is different than null
. null
is purely database-related, whereas blank
is validation-related. If a field has blank=True
, form validation will allow entry of an empty value. If a field has blank=False
, the field will be required.
choices
-
Field.choices
A sequence consisting itself of iterables of exactly two items (e.g. [(A, B), (A, B) ...]
) to use as choices for this field. If choices are given, they’re enforced by model validation and the default form widget will be a select box with these choices instead of the standard text field.
The first element in each tuple is the actual value to be set on the model, and the second element is the human-readable name. For example:
YEAR_IN_SCHOOL_CHOICES = [ ('FR', 'Freshman'), ('SO', 'Sophomore'), ('JR', 'Junior'), ('SR', 'Senior'), ('GR', 'Graduate'), ]
Generally, it’s best to define choices inside a model class, and to define a suitably-named constant for each value:
from django.db import models class Student(models.Model): FRESHMAN = 'FR' SOPHOMORE = 'SO' JUNIOR = 'JR' SENIOR = 'SR' GRADUATE = 'GR' YEAR_IN_SCHOOL_CHOICES = [ (FRESHMAN, 'Freshman'), (SOPHOMORE, 'Sophomore'), (JUNIOR, 'Junior'), (SENIOR, 'Senior'), (GRADUATE, 'Graduate'), ] year_in_school = models.CharField( max_length=2, choices=YEAR_IN_SCHOOL_CHOICES, default=FRESHMAN, ) def is_upperclass(self): return self.year_in_school in {self.JUNIOR, self.SENIOR}
Though you can define a choices list outside of a model class and then refer to it, defining the choices and names for each choice inside the model class keeps all of that information with the class that uses it, and helps reference the choices (e.g, Student.SOPHOMORE
will work anywhere that the Student
model has been imported).
You can also collect your available choices into named groups that can be used for organizational purposes:
MEDIA_CHOICES = [ ('Audio', ( ('vinyl', 'Vinyl'), ('cd', 'CD'), ) ), ('Video', ( ('vhs', 'VHS Tape'), ('dvd', 'DVD'), ) ), ('unknown', 'Unknown'), ]
The first element in each tuple is the name to apply to the group. The second element is an iterable of 2-tuples, with each 2-tuple containing a value and a human-readable name for an option. Grouped options may be combined with ungrouped options within a single list (such as the 'unknown'
option in this example).
For each model field that has choices
set, Django will add a method to retrieve the human-readable name for the field’s current value. See get_FOO_display()
in the database API documentation.
Note that choices can be any sequence object – not necessarily a list or tuple. This lets you construct choices dynamically. But if you find yourself hacking choices
to be dynamic, you’re probably better off using a proper database table with a ForeignKey
. choices
is meant for static data that doesn’t change much, if ever.
Note
A new migration is created each time the order of choices
changes.
Unless blank=False
is set on the field along with a default
then a label containing "---------"
will be rendered with the select box. To override this behavior, add a tuple to choices
containing None
; e.g. (None, 'Your String For Display')
. Alternatively, you can use an empty string instead of None
where this makes sense - such as on a CharField
.
Enumeration types
In addition, Django provides enumeration types that you can subclass to define choices in a concise way:
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _ class Student(models.Model): class YearInSchool(models.TextChoices): FRESHMAN = 'FR', _('Freshman') SOPHOMORE = 'SO', _('Sophomore') JUNIOR = 'JR', _('Junior') SENIOR = 'SR', _('Senior') GRADUATE = 'GR', _('Graduate') year_in_school = models.CharField( max_length=2, choices=YearInSchool.choices, default=YearInSchool.FRESHMAN, ) def is_upperclass(self): return self.year_in_school in { self.YearInSchool.JUNIOR, self.YearInSchool.SENIOR, }
These work similar to enum
from Python’s standard library, but with some modifications:
- Enum member values are a tuple of arguments to use when constructing the concrete data type. Django supports adding an extra string value to the end of this tuple to be used as the human-readable name, or
label
. Thelabel
can be a lazy translatable string. Thus, in most cases, the member value will be a(value, label)
two-tuple. See below for an example of subclassing choices using a more complex data type. If a tuple is not provided, or the last item is not a (lazy) string, thelabel
is automatically generated from the member name. - A
.label
property is added on values, to return the human-readable name. - A number of custom properties are added to the enumeration classes –
.choices
,.labels
,.values
, and.names
– to make it easier to access lists of those separate parts of the enumeration. Use.choices
as a suitable value to pass tochoices
in a field definition. - The use of
enum.unique()
is enforced to ensure that values cannot be defined multiple times. This is unlikely to be expected in choices for a field.
Note that using YearInSchool.SENIOR
, YearInSchool['SENIOR']
, or YearInSchool('SR')
to access or lookup enum members work as expected, as do the .name
and .value
properties on the members.
If you don’t need to have the human-readable names translated, you can have them inferred from the member name (replacing underscores with spaces and using title-case):
>>> class Vehicle(models.TextChoices): ... CAR = 'C' ... TRUCK = 'T' ... JET_SKI = 'J' ... >>> Vehicle.JET_SKI.label 'Jet Ski'
Since the case where the enum values need to be integers is extremely common, Django provides an IntegerChoices
class. For example:
class Card(models.Model): class Suit(models.IntegerChoices): DIAMOND = 1 SPADE = 2 HEART = 3 CLUB = 4 suit = models.IntegerField(choices=Suit.choices)
It is also possible to make use of the Enum Functional API with the caveat that labels are automatically generated as highlighted above:
>>> MedalType = models.TextChoices('MedalType', 'GOLD SILVER BRONZE') >>> MedalType.choices [('GOLD', 'Gold'), ('SILVER', 'Silver'), ('BRONZE', 'Bronze')] >>> Place = models.IntegerChoices('Place', 'FIRST SECOND THIRD') >>> Place.choices [(1, 'First'), (2, 'Second'), (3, 'Third')]
If you require support for a concrete data type other than int
or str
, you can subclass Choices
and the required concrete data type, e.g. date
for use with DateField
:
class MoonLandings(datetime.date, models.Choices): APOLLO_11 = 1969, 7, 20, 'Apollo 11 (Eagle)' APOLLO_12 = 1969, 11, 19, 'Apollo 12 (Intrepid)' APOLLO_14 = 1971, 2, 5, 'Apollo 14 (Antares)' APOLLO_15 = 1971, 7, 30, 'Apollo 15 (Falcon)' APOLLO_16 = 1972, 4, 21, 'Apollo 16 (Orion)' APOLLO_17 = 1972, 12, 11, 'Apollo 17 (Challenger)'
There are some additional caveats to be aware of:
- Enumeration types do not support named groups.
-
Because an enumeration with a concrete data type requires all values to match the type, overriding the blank label cannot be achieved by creating a member with a value of
None
. Instead, set the__empty__
attribute on the class:class Answer(models.IntegerChoices): NO = 0, _('No') YES = 1, _('Yes') __empty__ = _('(Unknown)')
The TextChoices
, IntegerChoices
, and Choices
classes were added.
db_column
-
Field.db_column
The name of the database column to use for this field. If this isn’t given, Django will use the field’s name.
If your database column name is an SQL reserved word, or contains characters that aren’t allowed in Python variable names – notably, the hyphen – that’s OK. Django quotes column and table names behind the scenes.
db_index
-
Field.db_index
If True
, a database index will be created for this field.
db_tablespace
-
Field.db_tablespace
The name of the database tablespace to use for this field’s index, if this field is indexed. The default is the project’s DEFAULT_INDEX_TABLESPACE
setting, if set, or the db_tablespace
of the model, if any. If the backend doesn’t support tablespaces for indexes, this option is ignored.
default
-
Field.default
The default value for the field. This can be a value or a callable object. If callable it will be called every time a new object is created.
The default can’t be a mutable object (model instance, list
, set
, etc.), as a reference to the same instance of that object would be used as the default value in all new model instances. Instead, wrap the desired default in a callable. For example, if you want to specify a default dict
for JSONField
, use a function:
def contact_default(): return {"email": "[email protected]"} contact_info = JSONField("ContactInfo", default=contact_default)
lambda
s can’t be used for field options like default
because they can’t be serialized by migrations. See that documentation for other caveats.
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.
The default value is used when new model instances are created and a value isn’t provided for the field. When the field is a primary key, the default is also used when the field is set to None
.
editable
-
Field.editable
If False
, the field will not be displayed in the admin or any other ModelForm
. They are also skipped during model validation. Default is True
.
error_messages
-
Field.error_messages
The error_messages
argument lets you override the default messages that the field will raise. Pass in a dictionary with keys matching the error messages you want to override.
Error message keys include null
, blank
, invalid
, invalid_choice
, unique
, and unique_for_date
. Additional error message keys are specified for each field in the Field types section below.
These error messages often don’t propagate to forms. See Considerations regarding model’s error_messages.
help_text
-
Field.help_text
Extra “help” text to be displayed with the form widget. It’s useful for documentation even if your field isn’t used on a form.
Note that this value is not HTML-escaped in automatically-generated forms. This lets you include HTML in help_text
if you so desire. For example:
help_text="Please use the following format: <em>YYYY-MM-DD</em>."
Alternatively you can use plain text and django.utils.html.escape()
to escape any HTML special characters. Ensure that you escape any help text that may come from untrusted users to avoid a cross-site scripting attack.
primary_key
-
Field.primary_key
If True
, this field is the primary key for the model.
If you don’t specify primary_key=True
for any field in your model, Django will automatically add an AutoField
to hold the primary key, so you don’t need to set primary_key=True
on any of your fields unless you want to override the default primary-key behavior. For more, see Automatic primary key fields.
primary_key=True
implies null=False
and unique=True
. Only one primary key is allowed on an object.
The primary key field is read-only. If you change the value of the primary key on an existing object and then save it, a new object will be created alongside the old one.
unique
-
Field.unique
If True
, this field must be unique throughout the table.
This is enforced at the database level and by model validation. If you try to save a model with a duplicate value in a unique
field, a django.db.IntegrityError
will be raised by the model’s save()
method.
This option is valid on all field types except ManyToManyField
and OneToOneField
.
Note that when unique
is True
, you don’t need to specify db_index
, because unique
implies the creation of an index.
unique_for_date
-
Field.unique_for_date
Set this to the name of a DateField
or DateTimeField
to require that this field be unique for the value of the date field.
For example, if you have a field title
that has unique_for_date="pub_date"
, then Django wouldn’t allow the entry of two records with the same title
and pub_date
.
Note that if you set this to point to a DateTimeField
, only the date portion of the field will be considered. Besides, when USE_TZ
is True
, the check will be performed in the current time zone at the time the object gets saved.
This is enforced by Model.validate_unique()
during model validation but not at the database level. If any unique_for_date
constraint involves fields that are not part of a ModelForm
(for example, if one of the fields is listed in exclude
or has editable=False
), Model.validate_unique()
will skip validation for that particular constraint.
unique_for_month
-
Field.unique_for_month
Like unique_for_date
, but requires the field to be unique with respect to the month.
unique_for_year
-
Field.unique_for_year
Like unique_for_date
and unique_for_month
.
verbose_name
-
Field.verbose_name
A human-readable name for the field. If the verbose name isn’t given, Django will automatically create it using the field’s attribute name, converting underscores to spaces. See Verbose field names.
validators
-
Field.validators
A list of validators to run for this field. See the validators documentation for more information.
Registering and fetching lookups
Field
implements the lookup registration API. The API can be used to customize which lookups are available for a field class, and how lookups are fetched from a field.
Field types
AutoField
-
class AutoField(**options)
An IntegerField
that automatically increments according to available IDs. You usually won’t need to use this directly; a primary key field will automatically be added to your model if you don’t specify otherwise. See Automatic primary key fields.
BigAutoField
-
class BigAutoField(**options)
A 64-bit integer, much like an AutoField
except that it is guaranteed to fit numbers from 1
to 9223372036854775807
.
BigIntegerField
-
class BigIntegerField(**options)
A 64-bit integer, much like an IntegerField
except that it is guaranteed to fit numbers from -9223372036854775808
to 9223372036854775807
. The default form widget for this field is a NumberInput
.
BinaryField
-
class BinaryField(max_length=None, **options)
A field to store raw binary data. It can be assigned bytes
, bytearray
, or memoryview
.
By default, BinaryField
sets editable
to False
, in which case it can’t be included in a ModelForm
.
BinaryField
has one extra optional argument:
-
BinaryField.max_length
-
The maximum length (in characters) of the field. The maximum length is enforced in Django’s validation using
MaxLengthValidator
.
Abusing BinaryField
Although you might think about storing files in the database, consider that it is bad design in 99% of the cases. This field is not a replacement for proper static files handling.
BooleanField
-
class BooleanField(**options)
A true/false field.
The default form widget for this field is CheckboxInput
, or NullBooleanSelect
if null=True
.
The default value of BooleanField
is None
when Field.default
isn’t defined.
CharField
-
class CharField(max_length=None, **options)
A string field, for small- to large-sized strings.
For large amounts of text, use TextField
.
The default form widget for this field is a TextInput
.
CharField
has one extra required argument:
-
CharField.max_length
-
The maximum length (in characters) of the field. The max_length is enforced at the database level and in Django’s validation using
MaxLengthValidator
.
Note
If you are writing an application that must be portable to multiple database backends, you should be aware that there are restrictions on max_length
for some backends. Refer to the database backend notes for details.
DateField
-
class DateField(auto_now=False, auto_now_add=False, **options)
A date, represented in Python by a datetime.date
instance. Has a few extra, optional arguments:
-
DateField.auto_now
-
Automatically set the field to now every time the object is saved. Useful for “last-modified” timestamps. Note that the current date is always used; it’s not just a default value that you can override.
The field is only automatically updated when calling
Model.save()
. The field isn’t updated when making updates to other fields in other ways such asQuerySet.update()
, though you can specify a custom value for the field in an update like that.
-
DateField.auto_now_add
-
Automatically set the field to now when the object is first created. Useful for creation of timestamps. Note that the current date is always used; it’s not just a default value that you can override. So even if you set a value for this field when creating the object, it will be ignored. If you want to be able to modify this field, set the following instead of
auto_now_add=True
:- For
DateField
:default=date.today
- fromdatetime.date.today()
- For
DateTimeField
:default=timezone.now
- fromdjango.utils.timezone.now()
- For
The default form widget for this field is a DateInput
. The admin adds a JavaScript calendar, and a shortcut for “Today”. Includes an additional invalid_date
error message key.
The options auto_now_add
, auto_now
, and default
are mutually exclusive. Any combination of these options will result in an error.
Note
As currently implemented, setting auto_now
or auto_now_add
to True
will cause the field to have editable=False
and blank=True
set.
Note
The auto_now
and auto_now_add
options will always use the date in the default timezone at the moment of creation or update. If you need something different, you may want to consider using your own callable default or overriding save()
instead of using auto_now
or auto_now_add
; or using a DateTimeField
instead of a DateField
and deciding how to handle the conversion from datetime to date at display time.
DateTimeField
-
class DateTimeField(auto_now=False, auto_now_add=False, **options)
A date and time, represented in Python by a datetime.datetime
instance. Takes the same extra arguments as DateField
.
The default form widget for this field is a single DateTimeInput
. The admin uses two separate TextInput
widgets with JavaScript shortcuts.
DecimalField
-
class DecimalField(max_digits=None, decimal_places=None, **options)
A fixed-precision decimal number, represented in Python by a Decimal
instance. It validates the input using DecimalValidator
.
Has two required arguments:
-
DecimalField.max_digits
-
The maximum number of digits allowed in the number. Note that this number must be greater than or equal to
decimal_places
.
-
DecimalField.decimal_places
-
The number of decimal places to store with the number.
For example, to store numbers up to 999
with a resolution of 2 decimal places, you’d use:
models.DecimalField(..., max_digits=5, decimal_places=2)
And to store numbers up to approximately one billion with a resolution of 10 decimal places:
models.DecimalField(..., max_digits=19, decimal_places=10)
The default form widget for this field is a NumberInput
when localize
is False
or TextInput
otherwise.
Note
For more information about the differences between the FloatField
and DecimalField
classes, please see FloatField vs. DecimalField. You should also be aware of SQLite limitations of decimal fields.
DurationField
-
class DurationField(**options)
A field for storing periods of time - modeled in Python by timedelta
. When used on PostgreSQL, the data type used is an interval
and on Oracle the data type is INTERVAL DAY(9) TO
SECOND(6)
. Otherwise a bigint
of microseconds is used.
Note
Arithmetic with DurationField
works in most cases. However on all databases other than PostgreSQL, comparing the value of a DurationField
to arithmetic on DateTimeField
instances will not work as expected.
EmailField
-
class EmailField(max_length=254, **options)
A CharField
that checks that the value is a valid email address using EmailValidator
.
FileField
-
class FileField(upload_to=None, max_length=100, **options)
A file-upload field.
Note
The primary_key
argument isn’t supported and will raise an error if used.
Has two optional arguments:
-
FileField.upload_to
-
This attribute provides a way of setting the upload directory and file name, and can be set in two ways. In both cases, the value is passed to the
Storage.save()
method.If you specify a string value or a
Path
, it may containstrftime()
formatting, which will be replaced by the date/time of the file upload (so that uploaded files don’t fill up the given directory). For example:class MyModel(models.Model): # file will be uploaded to MEDIA_ROOT/uploads upload = models.FileField(upload_to='uploads/') # or... # file will be saved to MEDIA_ROOT/uploads/2015/01/30 upload = models.FileField(upload_to='uploads/%Y/%m/%d/')
If you are using the default
FileSystemStorage
, the string value will be appended to yourMEDIA_ROOT
path to form the location on the local filesystem where uploaded files will be stored. If you are using a different storage, check that storage’s documentation to see how it handlesupload_to
.upload_to
may also be a callable, such as a function. This will be called to obtain the upload path, including the filename. This callable must accept two arguments and return a Unix-style path (with forward slashes) to be passed along to the storage system. The two arguments are:Argument Description instance
An instance of the model where the
FileField
is defined. More specifically, this is the particular instance where the current file is being attached.In most cases, this object will not have been saved to the database yet, so if it uses the default
AutoField
, it might not yet have a value for its primary key field.filename
The filename that was originally given to the file. This may or may not be taken into account when determining the final destination path. For example:
def user_directory_path(instance, filename): # file will be uploaded to MEDIA_ROOT/user_<id>/<filename> return 'user_{0}/{1}'.format(instance.user.id, filename) class MyModel(models.Model): upload = models.FileField(upload_to=user_directory_path)
Changed in Django 3.0:Support for
pathlib.Path
was added.
-
FileField.storage
-
A storage object, which handles the storage and retrieval of your files. See Managing files for details on how to provide this object.
The default form widget for this field is a ClearableFileInput
.
Using a FileField
or an ImageField
(see below) in a model takes a few steps:
- In your settings file, you’ll need to define
MEDIA_ROOT
as the full path to a directory where you’d like Django to store uploaded files. (For performance, these files are not stored in the database.) DefineMEDIA_URL
as the base public URL of that directory. Make sure that this directory is writable by the Web server’s user account. - Add the
FileField
orImageField
to your model, defining theupload_to
option to specify a subdirectory ofMEDIA_ROOT
to use for uploaded files. - All that will be stored in your database is a path to the file (relative to
MEDIA_ROOT
). You’ll most likely want to use the convenienceurl
attribute provided by Django. For example, if yourImageField
is calledmug_shot
, you can get the absolute path to your image in a template with{{ object.mug_shot.url }}
.
For example, say your MEDIA_ROOT
is set to '/home/media'
, and upload_to
is set to 'photos/%Y/%m/%d'
. The '%Y/%m/%d'
part of upload_to
is strftime()
formatting; '%Y'
is the four-digit year, '%m'
is the two-digit month and '%d'
is the two-digit day. If you upload a file on Jan. 15, 2007, it will be saved in the directory /home/media/photos/2007/01/15
.
If you wanted to retrieve the uploaded file’s on-disk filename, or the file’s size, you could use the name
and size
attributes respectively; for more information on the available attributes and methods, see the File
class reference and the Managing files topic guide.
Note
The file is saved as part of saving the model in the database, so the actual file name used on disk cannot be relied on until after the model has been saved.
The uploaded file’s relative URL can be obtained using the url
attribute. Internally, this calls the url()
method of the underlying Storage
class.
Note that whenever you deal with uploaded files, you should pay close attention to where you’re uploading them and what type of files they are, to avoid security holes. Validate all uploaded files so that you’re sure the files are what you think they are. For example, if you blindly let somebody upload files, without validation, to a directory that’s within your Web server’s document root, then somebody could upload a CGI or PHP script and execute that script by visiting its URL on your site. Don’t allow that.
Also note that even an uploaded HTML file, since it can be executed by the browser (though not by the server), can pose security threats that are equivalent to XSS or CSRF attacks.
FileField
instances are created in your database as varchar
columns with a default max length of 100 characters. As with other fields, you can change the maximum length using the max_length
argument.
FileField
and FieldFile
-
class FieldFile
When you access a FileField
on a model, you are given an instance of FieldFile
as a proxy for accessing the underlying file.
The API of FieldFile
mirrors that of File
, with one key difference: The object wrapped by the class is not necessarily a wrapper around Python’s built-in file object. Instead, it is a wrapper around the result of the Storage.open()
method, which may be a File
object, or it may be a custom storage’s implementation of the File
API.
In addition to the API inherited from File
such as read()
and write()
, FieldFile
includes several methods that can be used to interact with the underlying file:
Warning
Two methods of this class, save()
and delete()
, default to saving the model object of the associated FieldFile
in the database.
-
FieldFile.name
The name of the file including the relative path from the root of the Storage
of the associated FileField
.
-
FieldFile.size
The result of the underlying Storage.size()
method.
-
FieldFile.url
A read-only property to access the file’s relative URL by calling the url()
method of the underlying Storage
class.
-
FieldFile.open(mode='rb')
Opens or reopens the file associated with this instance in the specified mode
. Unlike the standard Python open()
method, it doesn’t return a file descriptor.
Since the underlying file is opened implicitly when accessing it, it may be unnecessary to call this method except to reset the pointer to the underlying file or to change the mode
.
-
FieldFile.close()
Behaves like the standard Python file.close()
method and closes the file associated with this instance.
-
FieldFile.save(name, content, save=True)
This method takes a filename and file contents and passes them to the storage class for the field, then associates the stored file with the model field. If you want to manually associate file data with FileField
instances on your model, the save()
method is used to persist that file data.
Takes two required arguments: name
which is the name of the file, and content
which is an object containing the file’s contents. The optional save
argument controls whether or not the model instance is saved after the file associated with this field has been altered. Defaults to True
.
Note that the content
argument should be an instance of django.core.files.File
, not Python’s built-in file object. You can construct a File
from an existing Python file object like this:
from django.core.files import File # Open an existing file using Python's built-in open() f = open('/path/to/hello.world') myfile = File(f)
Or you can construct one from a Python string like this:
from django.core.files.base import ContentFile myfile = ContentFile("hello world")
For more information, see Managing files.
-
FieldFile.delete(save=True)
Deletes the file associated with this instance and clears all attributes on the field. Note: This method will close the file if it happens to be open when delete()
is called.
The optional save
argument controls whether or not the model instance is saved after the file associated with this field has been deleted. Defaults to True
.
Note that when a model is deleted, related files are not deleted. If you need to cleanup orphaned files, you’ll need to handle it yourself (for instance, with a custom management command that can be run manually or scheduled to run periodically via e.g. cron).
FilePathField
-
class FilePathField(path='', match=None, recursive=False, allow_files=True, allow_folders=False, max_length=100, **options)
A CharField
whose choices are limited to the filenames in a certain directory on the filesystem. Has some special arguments, of which the first is required:
-
FilePathField.path
-
Required. The absolute filesystem path to a directory from which this
FilePathField
should get its choices. Example:"/home/images"
.path
may also be a callable, such as a function to dynamically set the path at runtime. Example:import os from django.conf import settings from django.db import models def images_path(): return os.path.join(settings.LOCAL_FILE_DIR, 'images') class MyModel(models.Model): file = models.FilePathField(path=images_path)
Changed in Django 3.0:path
can now be a callable.
-
FilePathField.match
-
Optional. A regular expression, as a string, that
FilePathField
will use to filter filenames. Note that the regex will be applied to the base filename, not the full path. Example:"foo.*\.txt$"
, which will match a file calledfoo23.txt
but notbar.txt
orfoo23.png
.
-
FilePathField.recursive
-
Optional. Either
True
orFalse
. Default isFalse
. Specifies whether all subdirectories ofpath
should be included
-
FilePathField.allow_files
-
Optional. Either
True
orFalse
. Default isTrue
. Specifies whether files in the specified location should be included. Either this orallow_folders
must beTrue
.
-
FilePathField.allow_folders
-
Optional. Either
True
orFalse
. Default isFalse
. Specifies whether folders in the specified location should be included. Either this orallow_files
must beTrue
.
Of course, these arguments can be used together.
The one potential gotcha is that match
applies to the base filename, not the full path. So, this example:
FilePathField(path="/home/images", match="foo.*", recursive=True)
…will match /home/images/foo.png
but not /home/images/foo/bar.png
because the match
applies to the base filename (foo.png
and bar.png
).
FilePathField
instances are created in your database as varchar
columns with a default max length of 100 characters. As with other fields, you can change the maximum length using the max_length
argument.
FloatField
-
class FloatField(**options)
A floating-point number represented in Python by a float
instance.
The default form widget for this field is a NumberInput
when localize
is False
or TextInput
otherwise.
FloatField
vs. DecimalField
The FloatField
class is sometimes mixed up with the DecimalField
class. Although they both represent real numbers, they represent those numbers differently. FloatField
uses Python’s float
type internally, while DecimalField
uses Python’s Decimal
type. For information on the difference between the two, see Python’s documentation for the decimal
module.
ImageField
-
class ImageField(upload_to=None, height_field=None, width_field=None, max_length=100, **options)
Inherits all attributes and methods from FileField
, but also validates that the uploaded object is a valid image.
In addition to the special attributes that are available for FileField
, an ImageField
also has height
and width
attributes.
To facilitate querying on those attributes, ImageField
has two extra optional arguments:
-
ImageField.height_field
-
Name of a model field which will be auto-populated with the height of the image each time the model instance is saved.
-
ImageField.width_field
-
Name of a model field which will be auto-populated with the width of the image each time the model instance is saved.
Requires the Pillow library.
ImageField
instances are created in your database as varchar
columns with a default max length of 100 characters. As with other fields, you can change the maximum length using the max_length
argument.
The default form widget for this field is a ClearableFileInput
.
IntegerField
-
class IntegerField(**options)
An integer. Values from -2147483648
to 2147483647
are safe in all databases supported by Django.
It uses MinValueValidator
and MaxValueValidator
to validate the input based on the values that the default database supports.
The default form widget for this field is a NumberInput
when localize
is False
or TextInput
otherwise.
GenericIPAddressField
-
class GenericIPAddressField(protocol='both', unpack_ipv4=False, **options)
An IPv4 or IPv6 address, in string format (e.g. 192.0.2.30
or 2a02:42fe::4
). The default form widget for this field is a TextInput
.
The IPv6 address normalization follows RFC 4291#section-2.2 section 2.2, including using the IPv4 format suggested in paragraph 3 of that section, like ::ffff:192.0.2.0
. For example, 2001:0::0:01
would be normalized to 2001::1
, and ::ffff:0a0a:0a0a
to ::ffff:10.10.10.10
. All characters are converted to lowercase.
-
GenericIPAddressField.protocol
-
Limits valid inputs to the specified protocol. Accepted values are
'both'
(default),'IPv4'
or'IPv6'
. Matching is case insensitive.
-
GenericIPAddressField.unpack_ipv4
-
Unpacks IPv4 mapped addresses like
::ffff:192.0.2.1
. If this option is enabled that address would be unpacked to192.0.2.1
. Default is disabled. Can only be used whenprotocol
is set to'both'
.
If you allow for blank values, you have to allow for null values since blank values are stored as null.
NullBooleanField
-
class NullBooleanField(**options)
Like BooleanField
with null=True
. Use that instead of this field as it’s likely to be deprecated in a future version of Django.
PositiveIntegerField
-
class PositiveIntegerField(**options)
Like an IntegerField
, but must be either positive or zero (0
). Values from 0
to 2147483647
are safe in all databases supported by Django. The value 0
is accepted for backward compatibility reasons.
PositiveSmallIntegerField
-
class PositiveSmallIntegerField(**options)
Like a PositiveIntegerField
, but only allows values under a certain (database-dependent) point. Values from 0
to 32767
are safe in all databases supported by Django.
SlugField
-
class SlugField(max_length=50, **options)
Slug is a newspaper term. A slug is a short label for something, containing only letters, numbers, underscores or hyphens. They’re generally used in URLs.
Like a CharField, you can specify max_length
(read the note about database portability and max_length
in that section, too). If max_length
is not specified, Django will use a default length of 50.
Implies setting Field.db_index
to True
.
It is often useful to automatically prepopulate a SlugField based on the value of some other value. You can do this automatically in the admin using prepopulated_fields
.
It uses validate_slug
or validate_unicode_slug
for validation.
-
SlugField.allow_unicode
-
If
True
, the field accepts Unicode letters in addition to ASCII letters. Defaults toFalse
.
SmallAutoField
-
class SmallAutoField(**options)
Like an AutoField
, but only allows values under a certain (database-dependent) limit. Values from 1
to 32767
are safe in all databases supported by Django.
SmallIntegerField
-
class SmallIntegerField(**options)
Like an IntegerField
, but only allows values under a certain (database-dependent) point. Values from -32768
to 32767
are safe in all databases supported by Django.
TextField
-
class TextField(**options)
A large text field. The default form widget for this field is a Textarea
.
If you specify a max_length
attribute, it will be reflected in the Textarea
widget of the auto-generated form field. However it is not enforced at the model or database level. Use a CharField
for that.
TimeField
-
class TimeField(auto_now=False, auto_now_add=False, **options)
A time, represented in Python by a datetime.time
instance. Accepts the same auto-population options as DateField
.
The default form widget for this field is a TimeInput
. The admin adds some JavaScript shortcuts.
URLField
-
class URLField(max_length=200, **options)
A CharField
for a URL, validated by URLValidator
.
The default form widget for this field is a URLInput
.
Like all CharField
subclasses, URLField
takes the optional max_length
argument. If you don’t specify max_length
, a default of 200 is used.
UUIDField
-
class UUIDField(**options)
A field for storing universally unique identifiers. Uses Python’s UUID
class. When used on PostgreSQL, this stores in a uuid
datatype, otherwise in a char(32)
.
Universally unique identifiers are a good alternative to AutoField
for primary_key
. The database will not generate the UUID for you, so it is recommended to use default
:
import uuid from django.db import models class MyUUIDModel(models.Model): id = models.UUIDField(primary_key=True, default=uuid.uuid4, editable=False) # other fields
Note that a callable (with the parentheses omitted) is passed to default
, not an instance of UUID
.
Lookups on PostgreSQL
Using iexact
, contains
, icontains
, startswith
, istartswith
, endswith
, or iendswith
lookups on PostgreSQL don’t work for values without hyphens, because PostgreSQL stores them in a hyphenated uuid datatype type.
Relationship fields
ForeignKey
-
class ForeignKey(to, on_delete, **options)
A many-to-one relationship. Requires two positional arguments: the class to which the model is related and the on_delete
option.
To create a recursive relationship – an object that has a many-to-one relationship with itself – use models.ForeignKey('self',
on_delete=models.CASCADE)
.
If you need to create a relationship on a model that has not yet been defined, you can use the name of the model, rather than the model object itself:
from django.db import models class Car(models.Model): manufacturer = models.ForeignKey( 'Manufacturer', on_delete=models.CASCADE, ) # ... class Manufacturer(models.Model): # ... pass
Relationships defined this way on abstract models are resolved when the model is subclassed as a concrete model and are not relative to the abstract model’s app_label
:
from django.db import models class AbstractCar(models.Model): manufacturer = models.ForeignKey('Manufacturer', on_delete=models.CASCADE) class Meta: abstract = True
from django.db import models from products.models import AbstractCar class Manufacturer(models.Model): pass class Car(AbstractCar): pass # Car.manufacturer will point to `production.Manufacturer` here.
To refer to models defined in another application, you can explicitly specify a model with the full application label. For example, if the Manufacturer
model above is defined in another application called production
, you’d need to use:
class Car(models.Model): manufacturer = models.ForeignKey( 'production.Manufacturer', on_delete=models.CASCADE, )
This sort of reference, called a lazy relationship, can be useful when resolving circular import dependencies between two applications.
A database index is automatically created on the ForeignKey
. You can disable this by setting db_index
to False
. You may want to avoid the overhead of an index if you are creating a foreign key for consistency rather than joins, or if you will be creating an alternative index like a partial or multiple column index.
Database Representation
Behind the scenes, Django appends "_id"
to the field name to create its database column name. In the above example, the database table for the Car
model will have a manufacturer_id
column. (You can change this explicitly by specifying db_column
) However, your code should never have to deal with the database column name, unless you write custom SQL. You’ll always deal with the field names of your model object.
Arguments
ForeignKey
accepts other arguments that define the details of how the relation works.
-
ForeignKey.on_delete
-
When an object referenced by a
ForeignKey
is deleted, Django will emulate the behavior of the SQL constraint specified by theon_delete
argument. For example, if you have a nullableForeignKey
and you want it to be set null when the referenced object is deleted:user = models.ForeignKey( User, models.SET_NULL, blank=True, null=True, )
on_delete
doesn’t create an SQL constraint in the database. Support for database-level cascade options may be implemented later.
The possible values for on_delete
are found in django.db.models
:
-
-
CASCADE
-
Cascade deletes. Django emulates the behavior of the SQL constraint ON DELETE CASCADE and also deletes the object containing the ForeignKey.
Model.delete()
isn’t called on related models, but thepre_delete
andpost_delete
signals are sent for all deleted objects.
-
-
-
PROTECT
-
Prevent deletion of the referenced object by raising
ProtectedError
, a subclass ofdjango.db.IntegrityError
.
-
-
-
SET_NULL
-
Set the
ForeignKey
null; this is only possible ifnull
isTrue
.
-
-
-
SET_DEFAULT
-
Set the
ForeignKey
to its default value; a default for theForeignKey
must be set.
-
-
-
SET()
-
Set the
ForeignKey
to the value passed toSET()
, or if a callable is passed in, the result of calling it. In most cases, passing a callable will be necessary to avoid executing queries at the time your models.py is imported:from django.conf import settings from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model from django.db import models def get_sentinel_user(): return get_user_model().objects.get_or_create(username='deleted')[0] class MyModel(models.Model): user = models.ForeignKey( settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, on_delete=models.SET(get_sentinel_user), )
-
-
-
DO_NOTHING
-
Take no action. If your database backend enforces referential integrity, this will cause an
IntegrityError
unless you manually add an SQLON DELETE
constraint to the database field.
-
-
ForeignKey.limit_choices_to
-
Sets a limit to the available choices for this field when this field is rendered using a
ModelForm
or the admin (by default, all objects in the queryset are available to choose). Either a dictionary, aQ
object, or a callable returning a dictionary orQ
object can be used.For example:
staff_member = models.ForeignKey( User, on_delete=models.CASCADE, limit_choices_to={'is_staff': True}, )
causes the corresponding field on the
ModelForm
to list onlyUsers
that haveis_staff=True
. This may be helpful in the Django admin.The callable form can be helpful, for instance, when used in conjunction with the Python
datetime
module to limit selections by date range. For example:def limit_pub_date_choices(): return {'pub_date__lte': datetime.date.utcnow()} limit_choices_to = limit_pub_date_choices
If
limit_choices_to
is or returns aQ object
, which is useful for complex queries, then it will only have an effect on the choices available in the admin when the field is not listed inraw_id_fields
in theModelAdmin
for the model.Note
If a callable is used for
limit_choices_to
, it will be invoked every time a new form is instantiated. It may also be invoked when a model is validated, for example by management commands or the admin. The admin constructs querysets to validate its form inputs in various edge cases multiple times, so there is a possibility your callable may be invoked several times.
-
The name to use for the relation from the related object back to this one. It’s also the default value for
related_query_name
(the name to use for the reverse filter name from the target model). See the related objects documentation for a full explanation and example. Note that you must set this value when defining relations on abstract models; and when you do so some special syntax is available.If you’d prefer Django not to create a backwards relation, set
related_name
to'+'
or end it with'+'
. For example, this will ensure that theUser
model won’t have a backwards relation to this model:user = models.ForeignKey( User, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='+', )
-
The name to use for the reverse filter name from the target model. It defaults to the value of
related_name
ordefault_related_name
if set, otherwise it defaults to the name of the model:# Declare the ForeignKey with related_query_name class Tag(models.Model): article = models.ForeignKey( Article, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name="tags", related_query_name="tag", ) name = models.CharField(max_length=255) # That's now the name of the reverse filter Article.objects.filter(tag__name="important")
Like
related_name
,related_query_name
supports app label and class interpolation via some special syntax.
-
ForeignKey.to_field
-
The field on the related object that the relation is to. By default, Django uses the primary key of the related object. If you reference a different field, that field must have
unique=True
.
-
ForeignKey.db_constraint
-
Controls whether or not a constraint should be created in the database for this foreign key. The default is
True
, and that’s almost certainly what you want; setting this toFalse
can be very bad for data integrity. That said, here are some scenarios where you might want to do this:- You have legacy data that is not valid.
- You’re sharding your database.
If this is set to
False
, accessing a related object that doesn’t exist will raise itsDoesNotExist
exception.
-
ForeignKey.swappable
-
Controls the migration framework’s reaction if this
ForeignKey
is pointing at a swappable model. If it isTrue
- the default - then if theForeignKey
is pointing at a model which matches the current value ofsettings.AUTH_USER_MODEL
(or another swappable model setting) the relationship will be stored in the migration using a reference to the setting, not to the model directly.You only want to override this to be
False
if you are sure your model should always point towards the swapped-in model - for example, if it is a profile model designed specifically for your custom user model.Setting it to
False
does not mean you can reference a swappable model even if it is swapped out -False
means that the migrations made with this ForeignKey will always reference the exact model you specify (so it will fail hard if the user tries to run with a User model you don’t support, for example).If in doubt, leave it to its default of
True
.
ManyToManyField
-
class ManyToManyField(to, **options)
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.
Related objects can be added, removed, or created with the field’s RelatedManager
.
Database Representation
Behind the scenes, Django creates an intermediary join table to represent the many-to-many relationship. By default, this table name is generated using the name of the many-to-many field and the name of the table for the model that contains it. Since some databases don’t support table names above a certain length, these table names will be automatically truncated and a uniqueness hash will be used, e.g. author_books_9cdf
. You can manually provide the name of the join table using the db_table
option.
Arguments
ManyToManyField
accepts an extra set of arguments – all optional – that control how the relationship functions.
-
Same as
ForeignKey.related_name
.
-
Same as
ForeignKey.related_query_name
.
-
ManyToManyField.limit_choices_to
-
Same as
ForeignKey.limit_choices_to
.limit_choices_to
has no effect when used on aManyToManyField
with a custom intermediate table specified using thethrough
parameter.
-
ManyToManyField.symmetrical
-
Only used in the definition of ManyToManyFields on self. Consider the following model:
from django.db import models class Person(models.Model): friends = models.ManyToManyField("self")
When Django processes this model, it identifies that it has a
ManyToManyField
on itself, and as a result, it doesn’t add aperson_set
attribute to thePerson
class. Instead, theManyToManyField
is assumed to be symmetrical – that is, if I am your friend, then you are my friend.If you do not want symmetry in many-to-many relationships with
self
, setsymmetrical
toFalse
. This will force Django to add the descriptor for the reverse relationship, allowingManyToManyField
relationships to be non-symmetrical.Changed in Django 3.0:Specifying
symmetrical=True
for recursive many-to-many relationships using an intermediary model was allowed.
-
ManyToManyField.through
-
Django will automatically generate a table to manage many-to-many relationships. However, if you want to manually specify the intermediary table, you can use the
through
option to specify the Django model that represents the intermediate table that you want to use.The most common use for this option is when you want to associate extra data with a many-to-many relationship.
Note
If you don’t want multiple associations between the same instances, add a
UniqueConstraint
including the from and to fields. Django’s automatically generated many-to-many tables include such a constraint.Note
Recursive relationships using an intermediary model and defined as symmetrical (that is, with
symmetrical=True
, which is the default) can’t determine the reverse accessors names, as they would be the same. You need to set arelated_name
to at least one of them. If you’d prefer Django not to create a backwards relation, setrelated_name
to'+'
.If you don’t specify an explicit
through
model, there is still an implicitthrough
model class you can use to directly access the table created to hold the association. It has three fields to link the models.If the source and target models differ, the following fields are generated:
-
id
: the primary key of the relation. -
<containing_model>_id
: theid
of the model that declares theManyToManyField
. -
<other_model>_id
: theid
of the model that theManyToManyField
points to.
If the
ManyToManyField
points from and to the same model, the following fields are generated:-
id
: the primary key of the relation. -
from_<model>_id
: theid
of the instance which points at the model (i.e. the source instance). -
to_<model>_id
: theid
of the instance to which the relationship points (i.e. the target model instance).
This class can be used to query associated records for a given model instance like a normal model:
Model.m2mfield.through.objects.all()
-
-
ManyToManyField.through_fields
-
Only used when a custom intermediary model is specified. Django will normally determine which fields of the intermediary model to use in order to establish a many-to-many relationship automatically. However, consider the following models:
from django.db import models class Person(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=50) class Group(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=128) members = models.ManyToManyField( Person, through='Membership', through_fields=('group', 'person'), ) class Membership(models.Model): group = models.ForeignKey(Group, on_delete=models.CASCADE) person = models.ForeignKey(Person, on_delete=models.CASCADE) inviter = models.ForeignKey( Person, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name="membership_invites", ) invite_reason = models.CharField(max_length=64)
Membership
has two foreign keys toPerson
(person
andinviter
), which makes the relationship ambiguous and Django can’t know which one to use. In this case, you must explicitly specify which foreign keys Django should use usingthrough_fields
, as in the example above.through_fields
accepts a 2-tuple('field1', 'field2')
, wherefield1
is the name of the foreign key to the model theManyToManyField
is defined on (group
in this case), andfield2
the name of the foreign key to the target model (person
in this case).When you have more than one foreign key on an intermediary model to any (or even both) of the models participating in a many-to-many relationship, you must specify
through_fields
. This also applies to recursive relationships when an intermediary model is used and there are more than two foreign keys to the model, or you want to explicitly specify which two Django should use.
-
ManyToManyField.db_table
-
The name of the table to create for storing the many-to-many data. If this is not provided, Django will assume a default name based upon the names of: the table for the model defining the relationship and the name of the field itself.
-
ManyToManyField.db_constraint
-
Controls whether or not constraints should be created in the database for the foreign keys in the intermediary table. The default is
True
, and that’s almost certainly what you want; setting this toFalse
can be very bad for data integrity. That said, here are some scenarios where you might want to do this:- You have legacy data that is not valid.
- You’re sharding your database.
It is an error to pass both
db_constraint
andthrough
.
-
ManyToManyField.swappable
-
Controls the migration framework’s reaction if this
ManyToManyField
is pointing at a swappable model. If it isTrue
- the default - then if theManyToManyField
is pointing at a model which matches the current value ofsettings.AUTH_USER_MODEL
(or another swappable model setting) the relationship will be stored in the migration using a reference to the setting, not to the model directly.You only want to override this to be
False
if you are sure your model should always point towards the swapped-in model - for example, if it is a profile model designed specifically for your custom user model.If in doubt, leave it to its default of
True
.
ManyToManyField
does not support validators
.
null
has no effect since there is no way to require a relationship at the database level.
OneToOneField
-
class OneToOneField(to, on_delete, parent_link=False, **options)
A one-to-one relationship. Conceptually, this is similar to a ForeignKey
with unique=True
, but the “reverse” side of the relation will directly return a single object.
This is most useful as the primary key of a model which “extends” another model in some way; Multi-table inheritance is implemented by adding an implicit one-to-one relation from the child model to the parent model, for example.
One positional argument is required: the class to which the model will be related. This works exactly the same as it does for ForeignKey
, including all the options regarding recursive and lazy relationships.
If you do not specify the related_name
argument for the OneToOneField
, Django will use the lowercase name of the current model as default value.
With the following example:
from django.conf import settings from django.db import models class MySpecialUser(models.Model): user = models.OneToOneField( settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, on_delete=models.CASCADE, ) supervisor = models.OneToOneField( settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='supervisor_of', )
your resulting User
model will have the following attributes:
>>> user = User.objects.get(pk=1) >>> hasattr(user, 'myspecialuser') True >>> hasattr(user, 'supervisor_of') True
A RelatedObjectDoesNotExist
exception is raised when accessing the reverse relationship if an entry in the related table doesn’t exist. This is a subclass of the target model’s Model.DoesNotExist
exception. For example, if a user doesn’t have a supervisor designated by MySpecialUser
:
>>> user.supervisor_of Traceback (most recent call last): ... RelatedObjectDoesNotExist: User has no supervisor_of.
Additionally, OneToOneField
accepts all of the extra arguments accepted by ForeignKey
, plus one extra argument:
-
OneToOneField.parent_link
-
When
True
and used in a model which inherits from another concrete model, indicates that this field should be used as the link back to the parent class, rather than the extraOneToOneField
which would normally be implicitly created by subclassing.
See One-to-one relationships for usage examples of OneToOneField
.
Field API reference
-
class Field
-
Field
is an abstract class that represents a database table column. Django uses fields to create the database table (db_type()
), to map Python types to database (get_prep_value()
) and vice-versa (from_db_value()
).A field is thus a fundamental piece in different Django APIs, notably,
models
andquerysets
.In models, a field is instantiated as a class attribute and represents a particular table column, see Models. It has attributes such as
null
andunique
, and methods that Django uses to map the field value to database-specific values.A
Field
is a subclass ofRegisterLookupMixin
and thus bothTransform
andLookup
can be registered on it to be used inQuerySet
s (e.g.field_name__exact="foo"
). All built-in lookups are registered by default.All of Django’s built-in fields, such as
CharField
, are particular implementations ofField
. If you need a custom field, you can either subclass any of the built-in fields or write aField
from scratch. In either case, see Writing custom model fields.-
description
-
A verbose description of the field, e.g. for the
django.contrib.admindocs
application.The description can be of the form:
description = _("String (up to %(max_length)s)")
where the arguments are interpolated from the field’s
__dict__
.
-
descriptor_class
-
New in Django 3.0.
A class implementing the descriptor protocol that is instantiated and assigned to the model instance attribute. The constructor must accept a single argument, the
Field
instance. Overriding this class attribute allows for customizing the get and set behavior.
To map a
Field
to a database-specific type, Django exposes several methods:-
get_internal_type()
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Returns a string naming this field for backend specific purposes. By default, it returns the class name.
See Emulating built-in field types for usage in custom fields.
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db_type(connection)
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Returns the database column data type for the
Field
, taking into account theconnection
.See Custom database types for usage in custom fields.
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rel_db_type(connection)
-
Returns the database column data type for fields such as
ForeignKey
andOneToOneField
that point to theField
, taking into account theconnection
.See Custom database types for usage in custom fields.
There are three main situations where Django needs to interact with the database backend and fields:
- when it queries the database (Python value -> database backend value)
- when it loads data from the database (database backend value -> Python value)
- when it saves to the database (Python value -> database backend value)
When querying,
get_db_prep_value()
andget_prep_value()
are used:-
get_prep_value(value)
-
value
is the current value of the model’s attribute, and the method should return data in a format that has been prepared for use as a parameter in a query.See Converting Python objects to query values for usage.
-
get_db_prep_value(value, connection, prepared=False)
-
Converts
value
to a backend-specific value. By default it returnsvalue
ifprepared=True
andget_prep_value()
if isFalse
.See Converting query values to database values for usage.
When loading data,
from_db_value()
is used:-
from_db_value(value, expression, connection)
-
Converts a value as returned by the database to a Python object. It is the reverse of
get_prep_value()
.This method is not used for most built-in fields as the database backend already returns the correct Python type, or the backend itself does the conversion.
expression
is the same asself
.See Converting values to Python objects for usage.
Note
For performance reasons,
from_db_value
is not implemented as a no-op on fields which do not require it (all Django fields). Consequently you may not callsuper
in your definition.
When saving,
pre_save()
andget_db_prep_save()
are used:-
get_db_prep_save(value, connection)
-
Same as the
get_db_prep_value()
, but called when the field value must be saved to the database. By default returnsget_db_prep_value()
.
-
pre_save(model_instance, add)
-
Method called prior to
get_db_prep_save()
to prepare the value before being saved (e.g. forDateField.auto_now
).model_instance
is the instance this field belongs to andadd
is whether the instance is being saved to the database for the first time.It should return the value of the appropriate attribute from
model_instance
for this field. The attribute name is inself.attname
(this is set up byField
).See Preprocessing values before saving for usage.
Fields often receive their values as a different type, either from serialization or from forms.
-
to_python(value)
-
Converts the value into the correct Python object. It acts as the reverse of
value_to_string()
, and is also called inclean()
.See Converting values to Python objects for usage.
Besides saving to the database, the field also needs to know how to serialize its value:
-
value_from_object(obj)
-
Returns the field’s value for the given model instance.
This method is often used by
value_to_string()
.
-
value_to_string(obj)
-
Converts
obj
to a string. Used to serialize the value of the field.See Converting field data for serialization for usage.
When using
model forms
, theField
needs to know which form field it should be represented by:-
formfield(form_class=None, choices_form_class=None, **kwargs)
-
Returns the default
django.forms.Field
of this field forModelForm
.By default, if both
form_class
andchoices_form_class
areNone
, it usesCharField
. If the field haschoices
andchoices_form_class
isn’t specified, it usesTypedChoiceField
.See Specifying the form field for a model field for usage.
-
deconstruct()
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Returns a 4-tuple with enough information to recreate the field:
- The name of the field on the model.
- The import path of the field (e.g.
"django.db.models.IntegerField"
). This should be the most portable version, so less specific may be better. - A list of positional arguments.
- A dict of keyword arguments.
This method must be added to fields prior to 1.7 to migrate its data using Migrations.
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Field attribute reference
Every Field
instance contains several attributes that allow introspecting its behavior. Use these attributes instead of isinstance
checks when you need to write code that depends on a field’s functionality. These attributes can be used together with the Model._meta API to narrow down a search for specific field types. Custom model fields should implement these flags.
Attributes for fields
-
Field.auto_created
-
Boolean flag that indicates if the field was automatically created, such as the
OneToOneField
used by model inheritance.
-
Field.concrete
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Boolean flag that indicates if the field has a database column associated with it.
-
Boolean flag that indicates if a field is used to back another non-hidden field’s functionality (e.g. the
content_type
andobject_id
fields that make up aGenericForeignKey
). Thehidden
flag is used to distinguish what constitutes the public subset of fields on the model from all the fields on the model.Note
Options.get_fields()
excludes hidden fields by default. Pass ininclude_hidden=True
to return hidden fields in the results.
-
Field.is_relation
-
Boolean flag that indicates if a field contains references to one or more other models for its functionality (e.g.
ForeignKey
,ManyToManyField
,OneToOneField
, etc.).
-
Field.model
-
Returns the model on which the field is defined. If a field is defined on a superclass of a model,
model
will refer to the superclass, not the class of the instance.
Attributes for fields with relations
These attributes are used to query for the cardinality and other details of a relation. These attribute are present on all fields; however, they will only have boolean values (rather than None
) if the field is a relation type (Field.is_relation=True
).
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Field.many_to_many
-
Boolean flag that is
True
if the field has a many-to-many relation;False
otherwise. The only field included with Django where this isTrue
isManyToManyField
.
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Field.many_to_one
-
Boolean flag that is
True
if the field has a many-to-one relation, such as aForeignKey
;False
otherwise.
-
Field.one_to_many
-
Boolean flag that is
True
if the field has a one-to-many relation, such as aGenericRelation
or the reverse of aForeignKey
;False
otherwise.
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Field.one_to_one
-
Boolean flag that is
True
if the field has a one-to-one relation, such as aOneToOneField
;False
otherwise.
-
Points to the model the field relates to. For example,
Author
inForeignKey(Author, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
. Therelated_model
for aGenericForeignKey
is alwaysNone
.
© Django Software Foundation and individual contributors
Licensed under the BSD License.
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/models/fields/