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pythondjangoclassmodelunique

Unique database entry determined by attributes

I have the following class:

from django.db import models

class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    age = models.CharField(max_length=200)

and I make two identical instances of this class:

alex_1 = Person(name='Alex', age=30)
alex_1.save()
alex_2 = Person(name='Alex', age=30)
alex_2.save()

This will save 2 entries in the person database. Is there any way to prevent the second instance (alex_2) from being saved as it's technically a duplicate? i.e., can you implement the __eq__ and __hash__ functions for models.Model instances?

Solution

  • As of , you can use a UniqueConstraint [Django-doc] over a combination of the fields:

    from django.db.models.constraints import UniqueConstraint

class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    age = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    class Meta:
        constraints = [
            UniqueConstraint(fields=['name', 'age'], name='person_unique')
        ]

    This thus means that the combination of name and age values should be unique. So Person(name='Alex', age=30) and Person(name='Alex', age=40) will not raise an error, but two objects Person(name='Alex', age=30) and Person(name='Alex', age=30) will result in an error, like:

    django.db.utils.IntegrityError: (1062, "Duplicate entry 'Alex-30' for key 'person_unique'")

    Before , you can use unique_together [Django-doc]:

    class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    age = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    class Meta:
        unique_together = ['name', 'age']