Hi Karen, On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 17:05 -0700, Karen Tracey wrote: > I'm brand new to Django, looking to see if I should use it for some > things I'd like to do with an existing database. One problem I ran > into pretty quickly is that the database tables have columns with > embedded spaces in their names. inspectdb runs without error but the > code it generates has syntax errors. For example: > > class Entrie(models.Model): > Entry ID = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True) > Entry = models.CharField(blank=True, unique=True, maxlength=150) > class Meta: > db_table = 'Entries' > > has to be changed to: > > class Entrie(models.Model): > EntryID = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True, db_column="Entry > ID") > Entry = models.CharField(blank=True, unique=True, maxlength=150) > class Meta: > db_table = 'Entries' > > before it can be imported without error. Then things seem to work -- > I've been able to retrieve some values, etc., but haven't done anything > real yet. I'm wondering though, if I'm going to hit bigger problems > down the road.
Those changes look correct and shouldn't lead to further problems. The db_column argument is the key thing to get right when using an existing database structure. The only huge difficulty with making legacy (existing) databases work with Django is when you have a multi-column primary key. We don't support that yet (although it is planned). > So my questions: > > 1 - Should inspectdb be able to handle columns with spaces in their > names? Should I file a ticket for this? I looked around but didn't > see anything that appeared relevant. Or: > > 2 - Does inspectdb's failute to handle this situation imply my existing > DB is really not well suited to mixing in Django at this point? Am I > likely to hit more serious roadblocks further on? FWIW, besides the > spaces in the column names I don't think there's anything too weird > about this DB. Inspectdb is just a tool to help kickstart the Django model situation. It is expected that you will need to make some modifications to the suggested model for it to work sometimes. The sort of things you did is the kind of changes that might be needed. If you wanted to submit a patch to make it handle this automatically, we would most likely accept it. Even if you don't feel like making a patch, you could file a ticket, although it probably won't be fixed with high priority -- but at least we won't forget to attend to it at some point. (That sounds like I don't care about the problem, but it's more a matter of there being things with a greater impact that can be dealt with first. Inspectdb is a tool for a niche sector of our users and we can't hope to get it perfectly right, so slight oddities are tolerated a little more. However, we do aim to fix all genuine problems eventually, if possible.) > I'm also curious about: > > 3 - Why was the trailing 's' taken off of the table named "Entries" to > generate the class Entrie? Inspectdb is trying to follow Django's normal pattern, but it chose poorly. We suggest that model names be singular (since they represent a single row in the table and a single instance of the thing you are modelling) and this is converted to a plural form for the table name. Of course, Django can't parse English, so some plural forms cause bad guesses to be made. We just chop the trailing 's' off, nothing more intelligent than that. You should feel free to rename your model class to whatever makes sense (e.g. Entry). That is what you will use in Python and providing you have things like db_table set as required, Django will handle the mapping transparently. If you do rename your model to "Entry", you probably also want to set the verbose_name_plural attribute in the Meta inner class so that it still shows up as "Entries" in the right places in the admin interface (otherwise you get to see "Entrys" and that is as odd as "Entrie"). Best wishes, Malcolm --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
