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Migrating with South on a field that uses auto_now_add=True
migration, auto_now_add=true, modify_date , datetimefield, auto_now=true, south, auto_now, startmigration, add_column, orm, auto_now_add
16th of December 2009
I have a Django model that looks something like this:
modify_date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
...
Retroactively now I wanted to add a field called add_date which uses the auto_now_add=True trick. The migration used in this project is South which is great but doesn't work very well with the auto_now_add=True because the field doesn't have a straight forward default. So, first I changed the field to this:
modify_date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
add_date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True, null=True)
...
Notice the null=True which is important. Then I used startmigration to generate the code for the forward and backward to which I added a this stuff:
def forwards(self, orm):
db.add_column('myapp_mymodel', 'add_date', orm['myapp.mymodel:add_date'])
for each in MyModel.objects.all():
# since MyModel is referenced elsewhere I can work out the oldest date
oldest_date = get_oldest_related_date(each,
default=each.modify_date)
each.add_date = oldest_date
each.save()
That way all old records will have the date (not entirely accurate but good enough) and all new records will automatically get a date. Is there a better way? I bet, but I don't know how to do it.
I think the better way is to avoid using auto_now_add in the first place, and instead use the more explicit "default=datetime.datetime.now" (or utcnow). Then South can handle it without assistance.
Carl: Using "default=datetime.datetime.now" doesn't work with South migrations. It causes South to evaluate the expression, hard-coding today's date in the migration. Then every time you run the migration you get that date, regardless of the actual date.
Hmm, apparently South 0.6 doesn't actually handle dynamic defaults well at all; I was basing this comment off the last time I did it, with 0.5, when it worked fine. So never mind ;-)
Though apparently the next version of South will handle it well again (by ignoring defaults entirely): http://south.aeracode.org/ticket/273