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Django models queries

I have 3 tables person(id, email,password,type), user_location(id,location,u_id) and reviews(id,review,from_id,to_id). The user_location(u_id) is the foreignkey to person(id). The review(from_id,to_id) is also foreignkey to person(id). So how can i filter out a person with type 'a' and location 'b' and the reviews he got with the reviewers name?
models.py
class Person(models.Model):
email = models.CharField(max_length=30)
pwd = models.CharField(max_length=30)
type = models.CharField(max_length=30)
class User_locations(models.Model):
location = models.CharField(max_length=30)
u_id = models.ForeignKey('Person', on_delete=models.CASCADE)

Not sure if I really understand what you're trying to do but this should point you in the right direction. Don't forget to refer to the doc for Many-to-one relationships and Lookups that span relationships. It says there:
To refer to a “reverse” relationship, use the lowercase name of the model.
And then use the normal __ to access attributes.
a_and_b = Person.objects.filter(type='a', user_locations__location='b')
reviewers = Person.objects.filter(to_id__in=a_and_b)
The first query selects all users with type a and location b. The second query filters on those results. This is all untested so you might need to tweak a little. Bottom line: follow the relationships. As a side note, you might want to read up on Django model naming conventions.

Converting a model to its base model

Consider this file :
from django.db import models
class Place(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
address = models.CharField(max_length=80)
class Restaurant(Place):
serves_hot_dogs = models.BooleanField(default=False)
serves_pizza = models.BooleanField(default=False)
Now, let's say that I have a Restaurant, named restaurant. But this place is no longer a restaurant, so I want to transform it to a Place. For that, I do :
p = Place.objects.get(pk=place_id)
p.restaurant.delete()
p.save()
It works well, p is no longer a restaurant, but something strange happens : The primary key (ID) of p in the Place table change, like if the Place was deleted and then recreated.
Why is this happening ?
And how can I transform my restaurant to a place without changing the place ID ?

You inherited restaurant from place and Django do some stuff about this kind of relation between two table in DB.Django calls that Multi-table inheritance.
Some of the features of this type of design include the following:
PK of two objects are same.
Two object in Django point of view seems as a one object so every change in PK of one object cause automatic change in other object.
There is an automatically-created OneToOneField relation between two model.
There is atomic transaction for query in these objects.
So this is normal behavior of Django ORM and Django manage change in those two object's PK. You can read more about this concept with concrete model and multi-table inheritance in this link.

Django/Python: Best Practice/Advice on handling external IDs for Multiple Multi-directional External APIs

So this is more of a conceptual question, and I am really looking for someone to just help point me in the right direction. I am building a middleware platform where I will be pull data in from inbound channels, manipulating it, and then pushing it out the other door to outbound channels. I will need to store the external id for each of these records, but the kicker is, records will be pulled from multiple sources, and then pushed to multiple sources. A single record in my system will need to be tied to any number of external ids.
a quick model to work with:
class record(models.Model):
#id
Name = models.CharField(max_length=255, help_text="")
Description = models.CharField(max_length=255, help_text="")
category_id = model.ForeignKey(category)
class category(models.Model):
#id
name = models.CharField(max_length=255, help_text="")
description = models.CharField(max_length=255, help_text="")
class channel(models.Model):
#id
name = models.CharField(max_length=255, help_text="")
inbound = models.BooleanField()
outbound = models.BooleanField()
Obviously, I cannot add a new field to every model every time I add a new integration, that would be soooo 90s. The obvious would be to create another model to simply store the channel and record id with the unique id, and maybe this is the answer.
class external_ref(models.Model):
model_name = models.CharfieldField()
internal_id = models.IntegerField()
external_id = models.IntegerField()
channel_id = models.IntegerField()
class Meta:
unique_together = ('model', 'internal_id',)
While my example holds simply 4 models, I will be integrating records from 10-20 different models, so something I could implement an a global level would be optimal. Other things I have considered:
Overwriting the base model class to create a new "parent" class that also holds an alpha-numberic representation of every record in the db as unique.
Creating an abstract model to do the same.
Possibly storing a json reference with channel : external_id that I could ping on every record to see if it has an external reference.
I'm really an open book on this, and the internet has become increasingly overwhelming to sift through. Any best practices or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I have this exact issue and yes there is not much information on the web in using Django this way. Heres what Im doing - haven't used it long enough to determine if its "the best" way.
I have a class IngestedModel which tracks the source of the incoming objects as well as their external ids. This is also where you would put a unique_together constraint (on external_id and source)
class RawObject(TimeStampedModel):
"""
A Table to keep track of all objects ingested into the database and where they came from
"""
data = models.JSONField()
source = models.ForeignKey(Source,on_delete=models.PROTECT)
class IngestedModel(models.Model):
external_id = models.CharField(max_length=50)
source = models.ForeignKey(Source,on_delete=models.CASCADE)# 1 or 0
raw_objects = models.ManyToManyField(RawObject,blank=True)
class Meta:
abstract = True
then every model that is created from ingested data inherits from this IngestedModel. That way you know its source and you can use each external object for more than 1 internal object and vise versa.
class Customer(IngesteModel):
class Order(IngestedModel):
...
etc.
Now this means there is no "IngestedModel" table but that every model has a field for source, external_id and a reference to a raw object (many to many). This feels more compositional rather than inherited - no child tables which seems better to me. I would also love to hear feedback on the "right" way to do this.

Giving a model knowledge of a many-to-many related model in django

EDIT: Given responses in comments and answer I tried suggestion and I get some errors when trying to query , also doing the related name query does not get the right results (as seen in comments)
BusinessLocations.objects.all()
Error: QuerySet object has no attribute 'objects' is the error.
In either case, I did a dump of all the tables and see this:
auth_business_permissions', u'auth_permission', u'auth_user', u'auth_user_businesss', u'auth_user_user_permissions', u'django_admin_log',
u'django_content_type', u'django_migrations', u'django_session', u'ipaswdb_address', u'ipaswdb_billing', u'ipaswdb_billing_businesss',
u'ipaswdb_designation', u'ipaswdb_business', u'ipaswdb_business_business_locations', u'ipaswdb_businessinsurances', u'ipaswdb_businessinvoices',
'ipaswdb_businesslocations', u'ipaswdb_businessterm', u'ipaswdb_insurance', u'ipaswdb_insurance_businesss', u'ipaswdb_invoice', u'ipaswdb_employee',
u'ipaswdb_employeeinvoice', u'ipaswdb_employeelocations', u'ipaswdb_employeeterms', u'ipaswdb_specialty']
I have a ipaswdb_business_business_locations and a ipaswdb_businesslocations which seems strange to me, and I wonder if my database is just gunked up?
Original Question:
I have two models a Business and an Employee. I want them both to be aware of each other but not directly but through another model called a 'BusinessesLocation`. I can sort of express this in my models but it doesn't look or feel right. It is like only the employee knows of the businesses, and not vice vice versa.
I had another question opened to try to answer this but the answer was not 100% correct in that it didn't offer for a many to many it was more like a one to many. In this case: An employee can work at many locations (potentially being an employee of many businesses) and a business can have many locations having many employees.
Currently my models work where this shell script works:
someEmployee.business_locations.all()[0].business.business_name
and it works fine, I can get all the locations of a business an employee works at and via that infer the many businesses an employee might work for given the businesses locations.
But I cannot figure out how to go the other way, and find out all the employees a business has working for them and at which locations
My current (wrongish) models are like this:
class Employee(models.Model):
first_name = models.CharField(max_length = 50)
business_locations = models.ManyToManyField('BusinessLocations', through='EmployeeLocations')
class EmployeeLocations(models.Model):
employee = models.ForeignKey('Employee', on_delete=models.CASCADE)
business_location = models.ForeignKey('BusinessLocations', on_delete=models.CASCADE)
created_at=models.DateField(auto_now_add=True)
updated_at=models.DateField(auto_now=True)
def __str__(self):
return self.provider.first_name
class BusinessLocations(models.Model):
address = models.ForeignKey('Address', on_delete= models.SET_NULL, null=True)
business = models.ForeignKey('Business', on_delete=models.CASCADE)
doing_business_as = models.CharField(max_length = 255)
created_at=models.DateField(auto_now_add=True)
updated_at=models.DateField(auto_now=True)
def __str__(self):
return self.doing_business_as
class Business(models.Model):
business_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
business_locations = I need something here no idea how
Bellow is some pseudo shell code demonstrating how I would like my models to work:
#create a new business location assume business has been created
newLocation = Address(...)
business.business_locations.add(newLocation, doing_business_as='alternative name maybe')
#assume employee exists
#add a new business location to the employee
#when i say selected business the form would have current employee then in its locations
#you'd have to select a business first, and get a list of all that businesses locations and you
#you could add the business location and then select another business with all ITS locations
# and add one there too if you wish
employee.employee_locations.add(selectedBusiness.business_locations[0])
employee.employee_locations.add(anotherSelectedBusiness.business_locations[1])
Below is what I cannot figure out how to do, vice versa...
#now lets see which businesses the employee works for.
for business in employee.business_locations
business.business_name
#and lets see each businesses employees:
for employee in Employee.objects.all()
employee.
?? No idea how to build the models to represent these relationships
I can get an employees business locations just fine, but I cannot get the above examples of getting a list of employees for a business. Not sure what I need to adjust (or methods I might need?) to get this to work like I want in my shell example.

What you're missing is Django's concept of related objects.
When you define a relationship in a model (i.e., a ForeignKey, OneToOneField, or ManyToManyField), instances of that model will have a convenient API to access the related objects.
You can access the related objects both in queries and as a manager attribute on your models. See the examples in the documentation. In your case this would look something like:
# Now lets see which businesses the employee works for:
Business.objects.filter(businesslocations__employee=employee).distinct()
# And let's see each business's employees:
Employee.objects.filter(business_locations__business=business).distinct()

Creating "classes" with Django

I'm just learning Django so feel free to correct me in any of my assumptions. I probably just need my mindset adjusted.
What I'm trying to do is creating a "class" in an OOP style. For example, let's say we're designing a bunch of Rooms. Each Room has Furniture. And each piece of Furniture has a Type and a Color. What I can see so far is that I can have
class FurnitureType(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
class FurnitureColor(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
class FurniturePiece(models.Model):
type = models.ForeignKey(FurnitureType)
color = models.ForeignKey(FurnitureColor)
sqft = models.IntegerField()
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
class Room(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
furnitures = models.ManyToManyField(FurniturePiece)
The problem is that each FurniturePiece has to have a unique name if I'm picking it out of the Django admin interface. If one person creates "Green Couch" then no one else can have a "Green Couch". What I'm wondering is if a) I need to learn more about Django UI and this is the right way to design this in Django or b) I have a bad design for this domain
The reason I want Furniture name to be unique is because 10 people could create a "Green Couch" each with a different sqft.

I don't get the problem with unique name. You can just specify it to be unique:
class FurniturePiece(models.Model):
type = models.ForeignKey(FurnitureType)
color = models.ForeignKey(FurnitureColor)
sqft = models.IntegerField()
name = models.CharField(max_length=200, unique=True)
I don't know whether you have to learn about Django UI or not. I guess you have to learn how to define models. The admin interface is just a generated interface based on your models. You can change the interface in certain aspects without changing the models, but besides that, there is less to learn about the admin interface.
I suggest you follow a tutorial like the djangobook, to get a good start with Django.
I think, the problem that you have is not how to use Django but more that you don't know how to model your application in general.
First you have to think about which entities do yo have (like Room, Furniture, etc.).
Then think about what relations they have.
Afterwards you can model them in Django. Of course in order to do this you have to know how to model the relations. The syntax might be Django specific but the logical relations are not. E.g. a many-to-many relation is not something Django specific, this is a term used in databases to express a certain relationship.
Djangos models are just abstraction of the database design below.
E.g you specified a many-to-many relationship between Room and FurniturePiece.
Now the question: Is this what you want? It means that a piece of furniture can belong to more than one room. This sounds strange. So maybe you want to model it that a piece of furniture only belongs to one room. But a room should still have several pieces of furniture. We therefore define a relationship from FurniturePiece to Room.
In Django, we can express this with:
class FurniturePiece(models.Model):
room = models.ForeignKey(Room)
type = models.ForeignKey(FurnitureType)
color = models.ForeignKey(FurnitureColor)
sqft = models.IntegerField()
name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
Maybe you should first learn about relational databases to get the basics before you model your application with Django.
It might be that this not necessary in order to create an application in Django. But it will definitely help you to understand whats going on, for every ORM not just Django's.

Why does each FurniturePiece need to have a unique name? It seems to me that if you remove that constraint everything just works.
(as an aside you seem to have accidentally dropped the models.Model base class for all but the Room model).

This is how I would do it:
class Room(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
pieces = models.ManyToManyField('FurniturePiece')
class FurniturePiece(models.Model):
itemid = models.CharField(max_length=20, unique=True) # This is what I would require to be unique.
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
type = models.ForeignKey('FurnitureType') # Note I put 'FurnitureType' in quotes because it hasn't been written yet (coming next).
color = models.ForeignKey('FurnitureColor') # Same here.
width_in_inches = models.PositiveIntegerField()
length_in_inches = models.PositiveIntegerField()
# Next is the property decorator which allows a method to be called without using ()
#property
def sqft(self):
return (self.length_in_inches * self.width_in_inches) / 144 # Obviously this is rough.
class FurnitureType(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
class FurnitureColor(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
Envision objects as real life objects, and you'll have a deeper understanding of the code as well. The reason for my sqft method is that data is best when normalized as much as possible. If you have a width and length, then when somebody asks, you have length, width, sqft, and if you add height, volume as well.