What is a django model?

A model is a class that matches a database table (or collection).
Models are defined in the apps models.py file, /app/models.py.

Say what? Let’s make an app with a database model!

Django Web Developer Course

Models example

We start a new project, movie database.

Inside the directory movie_site we now see:

Configure database

Open movie_site/settings.py, there are the lines:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
    }
}

A database is already set up!

We’ll use the default database system: sqlite3.

Create your database with this command:

Now you’ll see lots of lines:
“

Good job!

Create an app

Django sites can have many apps. Each app is like a plugin.

Let’s make a movie details app.
“

You have just created an app!
There’s a new folder: movies.

Open movie_site/settings.py.
Scroll down to the line INSTALLED_APPS and add the line ‘movies’.

Create a movie model

We can create our model now. In the movies/models.py you can define all models.
Create a class for your movies model. The class will map to the database table.

If you don’t know classes and object orientated programming, take this couse:

We class will contain attributes of our movie object.

from django.db import models

# Create your models here.
from django.db import models
from django.utils import timezone

class Movie(models.Model):
    author = models.ForeignKey('auth.User')
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    text = models.TextField()
    created_date = models.DateTimeField(
            default=timezone.now)

    def publish(self):
        self.published_date = timezone.now()
        self.save()

    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

Run the command;

This will output:

In English, that means it’s just created our database table!

Browse database

Open the database file (db.sqlite3) with sqlitebrowser.

Yeehaw! Our movie model is now our database.