Is it possible to generate django models from the database?

Question

I've been messing around with Django and the Django ORM at home, and I've got to say, I feel it is one of the best out there in terms of ease of use.

However, I was wondering if it was possible to use it in "reverse".

Basically what I would like to do is generate Django models from an existing database schema (from a project that doesn't use django and is pretty old).

Is this possible?

Update: the database in question is Oracle

Answer 1

Yes, use the inspectdb command:

• http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/django-admin/#inspectdb

inspectdb

Introspects the database tables in the database pointed-to by the DATABASE_NAME setting and outputs a Django model module (a models.py file) to standard output.

Use this if you have a legacy database with which you'd like to use Django. The script will inspect the database and create a model for each table within it.

As you might expect, the created models will have an attribute for every field in the table. Note that inspectdb has a few special cases in its field-name output:

[...]

Answer 2

(Django 1.7.1) Simply running python manage.py inspectdb will create classes for all tables in database and display on console.

 $ python manage.py inspectdb

Save this as a file by using standard Unix output redirection:

 $ python manage.py inspectdb > models.py

(This works for me with mysql and django 1.9)

Answer 3

I have made a reusable app based on django's inspectdb command utility, Django Inspectdb Refactor.

This breaks models into different files inside models folder from a existing database. This helps managing models when they become large in number.

You can install it via pip:

pip install django-inspectdb-refactor

Then register the app in settings.py as inspectdb_refactor

After this you can use it from command line as :

python manage.py inspectdb_refactor --database=your_dbname_defined_in_settings --app=your_app_label

This will successfully create models folder with all the tables as different model files inside your app. For example:

More details can be found here.