Develop Reference

Django ManyToMany Field Not Accepting Correct Model

I'm trying to make a manytomany field from a model that is not the model that the manytomany field will contain a list of. e.g.
class Following(models.Model):
following_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
following_user = models.ForeignKey(User, models.DO_NOTHING, related_name="following_user")
following = models.ManyToManyField(User, related_name="following")
This looks all good to me, but when I try to enter the shell and do something like User.following.add(OtherUser), I get an error saying that it was expecting OtherUser to be an instance of Following. Why is this? Did I not specify that the ManyToManyField was storing User instances when I declared the following variable?
models.ManyToManyField(**User**, related_name="following")

1 - Create a user : user = User(); user.save()
2 - Create a following : following = Following(); following.save()
3 - Add the user to the following : following.following.add(user)

You can reference a model with other model only once. But you are using User model two times, one with following_user field and other with following field. Look below your model.
class Following(models.Model):
following_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
following_user = models.ForeignKey(*User*, models.DO_NOTHING, related_name="following_user")
following = models.ManyToManyField(*User*, related_name="following")

try this:
Another side effect of using commit=False is seen when your model has a many-to-many relation with another model. If your model has a many-to-many relation and you specify commit=False when you save a form, Django cannot immediately save the form data for the many-to-many relation. This is because it isn’t possible to save many-to-many data for an instance until the instance exists in the database.
To work around this problem, every time you save a form using commit=False, Django adds a save_m2m() method to your ModelForm subclass. After you’ve manually saved the instance produced by the form, you can invoke save_m2m() to save the many-to-many form data. For example:

Using Django ModelForm with non-persistent model.Field

Is there a way to add a field to a Django model class such that:
It doesn't get persisted to the database (i.e. no column in the DB)
It does get rendered by a ModelForm
The widget for that field can be customised
I believe 3. can be done with a custom widget, and 2. will happen if the field inherits from models.Field. However, I haven't found a way to achieve 1. without breaking 2. and 3. I was hoping for a persist=False or db_column=None type of solution.
Scenario:
I'm using this to quickly produce data capture forms by only adding a class to the model, but in order to insert headers for sub sections I still having to edit the template. Was hoping to do the following:
models.py
from django.db import models
class Applicant(models.Model):
sectionA = models.SectionField(help_text="Personal details")
title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
sectionB = models.SectionField(help_text="Banking details")
account = models.CharField(max_length=100)
pin = models.CharField(max_length=100)
In the above example, sectionA and sectionB are instances of a custom model.Field that doesn't actually get persisted but cause a heading to be rendered by the ModelForm and a custom widget
Finally:
I realise this probably violates separation of View and Model.
Other questions have been asked about non-persisting fields but their solutions don't render in a ModelForm

Sort of, Just don't make them a model field, theres no need for them to be.
sectionA = "Personal details"
sectionB = "Banking details"
You can access them via form.instance where you need them, you could even make them a form field instead of a string as I've shown here.

Django Form with a one-to-many relationship

I have a form in Django called PersonForm this forms model has a one-to-many relationship with Car. When displaying the PersonForm just like in the Django Admin I would like to allow my users to select/deselect from a list of Cars etc. Is this possible? I'm looking for information on where to start.
This is what I have so far for the PersonForm:
class PersonForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Person
fields = ('description',)
The Models:
class Person(models.Model):
description = models.CharField(max_length="150")
class Car(models.Model):
make = models.CharField(max_length="25")
owner = models.ForeignKey('Person', related_name="Car")
So in the person form I need to show a list of cars that person is the owner of an allow selecting/deselecting of them. I'm assuming I can do this in the form i.e. using something like the related name.

Sounds like you want an inline model form. This give you the ability to add/remove Car objects from a Person within the Person form.
That previous link was for inlinemodeladmin. This next link is for an inline form:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/forms/modelforms/#modelforms-factory

I didn't have any chance with inline formset, so i would suggest to override your save method of the model, i feel it's more DRY:
class PersonForm(forms.ModelForm):
# add a field to select a car
car = forms.ModelChoiceField(car.objects.all())
class Meta:
model = Person
fields = ('description', 'car')
def save(self, commit=True):
instance = super().save(commit)
# set Car reverse foreign key from the Person model
instance.car_set.add(self.cleaned_data['car']))
return instance

I know this is an old thread, but since I found myself almost exclusively pointed here by google when searching, I thought I would include the following for anyone else looking for an answer.
The answer, I think, is to use
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/ref/forms/fields/#modelchoicefield
or
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/ref/forms/fields/#modelmultiplechoicefield
There is a good article on how to use the modelmultiplechoicefield at :
https://medium.com/swlh/django-forms-for-many-to-many-fields-d977dec4b024
But it works for one to many fields as well. These allow us to generate a form with multiple choices as checkboxes or similar widgets based upon a related field in a model.

Update only some field with create_update.update_object

I've defined a models.py with a "FirstClass" which contains a ForeignKey relathionship to "SecondClass". The relathionship can't be Null.
The SecondClass is very expansive (90.000 records), and when i display the FirstClass html form, it requires too many time generating the "select box" field.
Therefore, when I let user update the object (I use create_update.update_object generic view), i don't want to display and update the value of the foreignkey field, but i don't know how to do this...

Create a ModelForm and pass it into the view, according to the docs.
Since the foreign key should always exist upon creation, it's safe to ignore it in the update.
class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = FirstClass
exclude = ('SecondClass',)
# urls.py
(r'^foo/(?P<object_id>\d+)/$','django.views.generic.create_update.update_object',
{'form_class': MyModelForm})

User-defined text fields in django admin

Django (and database) newbie here.
I'm trying to figure out a way to enable the creation of n custom text fields for a table (let's call it Book) using the admin interface. I would like a way for the user to define new text fields through the admin interface (instead of defining fields like CustomField1, CustomField2, etc, through a model followed by running manage.py syncdb).
Ultimately, I would want to create a separate table called CustomFields. The django admin user (who is not a programmer), would go and enter the custom text fields in this table (e.g. pubdate, isbn, country). Then, when doing data entry for a Book, they would hit "+" for every custom field they wanted, have them available in a dropdown, and add accompanying text for the custom field. The text entered for each field is specific to the parent Book.
Any suggestions? I have a feeling there's a simple solution that I'm somehow not grasping here.

Where you might run into problems is because Django will not recreate tables or columns based on changing model declarations. This means you're unable to add fields to a table at run-time without running the generated sql on your database manually. What you'll need, instead, is a way of defining custom fields, and linking them to your model.
What I'd suggest is the following:
class CustomField(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=32)
class Book(models.Model):
... fields
class CustomValue(models.Model):
field = models.ForeignKey(CustomField)
value = models.CharField(max_length=255)
book = models.ForeignKey(Book)
The validation on the above is fairly non-existant, and this doesn't allow you to define required custom fields for each model, but you should be able to come up with that part if you need it later on.
# taken and modified from django online tutorial
class CustomValueInline(admin.StackedInline):
model = CustomValue
extra = 3
class BookAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
fieldsets = [
# your fields in here
]
inlines = [CustomValueInline]
admin.site.register(Book, BookAdmin)
This will allow users to select up to 3 custom fields and values directly, with the option to add more if they wish.
Edit: Changed the answer to reflect further information in comments.

For the beginning you can create one model for the book and one for the text field, both connected through a foreign key relation. You can easily administrate this then through django's inline admins, which will enable you to add more text fields!
# models.py
from django.db import models
class Book(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
class TextField(models.Model):
text = models.TextField
book = models.ForeignKey(Book)
# admin.py
from django.contrib import admin
from models import TextField, Book
class TextAdmin(admin.TabularInline):
model = TextField
class BookAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
inlines = [TextAdmin]
admin.site.register(Book, BookAdmin)