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Context: Django 1.7; MySQL 5.6.23; Running on AWS (not sure of exact Linux OS version)

I have a Django 1.7 project. When I do the initial makemigrations to build my DB locally on my Windows laptop, I get tables that are prefixed with my app name like this:

myapp_person (for Django class Person(models.Model))

myapp_personmap (for Django class PersonMap(models.Model))

When I makemigrations & migrate to the AWS Linux server, the tables are named like this:

MyApp_person

MyApp_personmap

Notice the unexpected CamelCase for the app-name prefix and the expected lower case for the rest of the table names.

My questions:

  1. What controls the appname prefix to the tables (e.g. "myapp_" in "myapp_person")?
  2. How can I get the migration to use all lowercase on AWS like it does locally on my Windows laptop?
Community
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JET
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    Linux file systems are case sensitive, so you should consider renaming the folder from `Myapp` to `myapp`. – Alasdair Sep 18 '15 at 18:29

2 Answers2

16

To use your own custom table name, you need to define a db_table parameter in your models Meta option.

From the Django docs on table names:

To override the database table name, use the db_table parameter in class Meta.

Query-1: What controls the appname prefix?

If you have not defined a db_table option in your model's Meta class, then Django automatically derives a name using the app label and the class name of the model.

From the official docs:

Django automatically derives the name of the database table from the name of your model class and the app that contains it. A model’s database table name is constructed by joining the model’s “app label” – the name you used in manage.py startapp – to the model’s class name, with an underscore between them.

For example:

If you have an app xyz created by manage.py startapp xyz, a model defined as class Abc will have a database table named as xyz_abc.

Query-2: Creating tables with custom table names

If you want to use a custom table name, then you need to use the db_table option in your model Meta.

Here, you can explicitly define the db table names in lowercase.

class Person(models.Model):

    class Meta:
        db_table = '"myapp_person"' # define your custom name

class PersonMap(models.Model):

    class Meta:
        db_table = '"myapp_personmap"' # define your custom name
Rahul Gupta
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4

You can use db_table from Model Meta Options:

class MyModel(models.Model):

...

class Meta:
    db_table = 'my_custom_table_name'
Gocht
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  • From the documentation link you provided, it does indeed say that "Django automatically derives the name of the database table from the name of your model class and the app that contains it." But it doesn't say if/how I can control the case of the resultant name. Do you know if that's possible so that I don't have to do this for every class I define? – JET Sep 18 '15 at 17:34
  • In Meta options you can change app_label if yoy want also. And yes when you define a modelo and make the migration the name of the table will be the defined in Meta as db_table and you need it in every model – Gocht Sep 18 '15 at 17:55
  • Thank you for your help @Gocht! – JET Sep 18 '15 at 18:58