Cleanest way to delete stale ContentTypes?

Question

I'd like to get rid of the follow message I get when running migrations:

The following content types are stale and need to be deleted:

    appname | modelname

Any objects related to these content types by a foreign key will also
be deleted. Are you sure you want to delete these content types?

It seems cleaner to encode the decision to delete or not delete in the migrations.

What's the cleanest way to detect and delete stale ContentTypes as part of my migrations? Why is it not done automatically if ContentTypes are created automatically?

If content types are used in [generic relations](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/ref/contrib/contenttypes/#generic-relations), removing them will trigger the `on_delete` action of the foreign key in those models and potentially cause data loss -- something that any automated action should avoid at all costs. Creating content types cannot cause data loss, so it is safe to do automatically. — knbk, Aug 31 '16 at 18:03
Is it not possible to detect if content types are used in generic relations? — jamjar, Aug 31 '16 at 18:23
Possibly related: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18869414/can-stale-content-types-be-automatically-deleted-in-django — Sebastian Wagner, May 09 '17 at 22:34

score 26 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 24 '20 at 18:38

26

Try this out to remove safely

python manage.py remove_stale_contenttypes

This command is available > Django 1.11

edited Jun 24 '20 at 18:38

David Lam

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answered May 10 '19 at 10:40

HamzaMushtaq

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this is no more done automagically since quite a long time, right? – benzkji Apr 29 '22 at 07:55
1

Is there a way of specifying an app? – gdvalderrama Jul 15 '22 at 10:57

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 09 '17 at 22:43

0

When migrating your database, you can add --noinput to manage.py like so:

manage.py migrate --noinput

This way, users won't be asked.

answered May 09 '17 at 22:43

Sebastian Wagner

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Are you sure this works? I have never been asked while migrating... – Ron Nov 27 '20 at 15:04
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I know :) But I've been working with django since about 9 years. And I've never seen that this takes care of the content types... – Ron Nov 27 '20 at 15:33

Cleanest way to delete stale ContentTypes?

2 Answers2