> > On May 21, 3:30 am, James Tauber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I find myself being inconsistent in whether I put model helper > >> methods > >> on a custom manager or just as top-level functions in models.py > >> [...] > >> Any thoughts on best practices? Heuristics for deciding which to use? > > > James Bennett has a nice write up on this. > > >http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2008/feb/25/managers/ > > Actually the post doesn't deal with my question at all. I'm not > talking about class methods vs manager methods, but rather top-level > (i.e. models module) functions vs manager methods.
Sorry, I misread your original post. > > django.contrib.auth.models.User.objects.create_user(...) > could have been > django.contrib.auth.models.create_user(...) I would favor the first of the two. Similarly, I would put friends_for_user() as a FriendshipManager method in your original example. Basically anything that acts on multiple Friendship model instances (i.e. a table-level function) would qualify to be a FriendshipManager method. Utility functions that don't really need to go against the DB but are used in conjunction with a model instance or model field would go as module level functions. So, taking the same django.contrib.auth example, the module level functions would be: django.contrib.auth.models.get_hexdigest django.contrib.auth.models.check_password There's another subtle advantage to manager methods if you write 3rd party apps. You can provide a new 'beta' manager implementation while still providing the older implementation during a transition phase. For example, django.contrib.auth.models.User.objects django.contrib.auth.models.User.beta_objects And in a future release, beta_objects would be renamed to objects, thus phasing out the old implementation. In general, I would say that if a function seems natural at the module level as well as at the manager level, it should probably be a manager method. -Rajesh --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
