Django model renaming

Question

I have a populated model (There is data in the model I need to preserve/use)named 'FeatureTag' that I need to rename to simply 'Feature'.

class FeatureTag(models.Model):
        name = models.CharField(max_length=48, unique=True)
        data = models.ManyToManyField(Product)
        def __unicode__(self):
                return self.name

3 Questions:

Is this something that can be done with Django?

Is this something that can be done with South?

Is there a way to rename the return statement for the model to reflect a different name?

THANKS!!!!

some good answers in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2862979/easiest-way-to-rename-a-model-using-django-south — gladysbixly, Mar 25 '11 at 18:30
re 3: yes, rename class name, add Meta option `db_table = 'appname_featuretag'` — Jerzyk, Mar 25 '11 at 18:41
Just add this to the renamed model?: class Meta: db_table = 'appname_featuretag' — pythondjango, Mar 25 '11 at 18:48
yes, but this will modify the database table name mapped to this model - is this what you wanted to do? — Lin, Mar 25 '11 at 18:52
Yea, but I also need the new model to pull the data from the old db table. I added the meta but the data isn't being pulled. — pythondjango, Mar 25 '11 at 19:08
what is exact table name - replace "appname" with our app. @Li db table *will not* be modified — Jerzyk, Mar 25 '11 at 19:39
GOT IT TO WORK. The db_table was giving me problems so I renamed the table then went into PSQL admin and renamed everything over. Thanks for the help. — pythondjango, Mar 25 '11 at 20:08
@Jerzyk - just to clarify, using db_table will not modify the actual table in the database, but the django model will now be mapped to a database table with a different name (unless db_table == the previous name). — Lin, Mar 26 '11 at 17:42
@li correct, but as you can see question was about changing name of the model not underlaying database table name :) — Jerzyk, Mar 26 '11 at 19:52

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 25 '11 at 18:31

2

For your 3 questions:

Yes, you can rename your Django's model, just make sure to fix all the references to it.
Yes, you can do this with South. You might need to edit the files generated by south - so make sure to check the code that is generated.
What function do you want to override and why? What is your use case?

answered Mar 25 '11 at 18:31

Lin

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Well, I renamed the model and all references, but when I ran syncdb, it claimed the contents were stale and needed to be deleted. I need to preserve the data in the model while renaming. – pythondjango Mar 25 '11 at 18:37
You would need to edit automatically generated South migrations as it would recognise the rename as a delete and a new model. There is a rename_table in South however so it can be done with a small amount of effort. http://south.aeracode.org/docs/databaseapi.html#methods – Stephen Paulger Mar 25 '11 at 18:38
It's not the contents of the table that it's saying is stale it's the ContentTypes, which is a table that tracks what models there are, when you remove a model (or rename it) that data becomes out of date. It should be fine to agree to remove them. As always take a backup first if it's live data. – Stephen Paulger Mar 25 '11 at 18:39

Django model renaming

1 Answers1