Re: Models: Referencing A Model In Another App and Different Project

As a general remark related to the issues that JJ has described... are there perhaps - or rather, should there be - pointers from the Django site that discuss some good practices to the overall approach of designing and building sites/projects/apps/databases - as opposed to the technical nitty-gritty of mode/view/form construction?

It seems there are an increasing number of "newbies" flocking to Django, with perhaps little or no background in CS fundamentals, and guidelines like these would be a good place to point them at!

On Thursday, 26 July 2012 03:12:09 UTC+2, JJ Zolper wrote:

Hello fellow Django developers,

So here is my model that interfaces with my Artists database:



from django.db import models

class Artist(models.Model):
      name = models.CharField(max_length=30)
      genre = models.CharField(max_length=30) 
      city = models.CharField(max_length=30) 
      state = models.CharField(max_length=30) 
      country = models.CharField(max_length=30)
      website = models.UrlField()

      def __unicode__(self):
            return self.name



Okay now that you see my database backend interface here's where I'm going next.

I've been working with GeoDjango for some time now. I've created an app within my GeoDjango project called "discover". What's my goal? Well, I want this app to be able to return information to my users. This app will take the given parameters such as "locationfrom" (the user of the website inserts their city, state) and then that value is used to bring in the artists in their area in relation to the variable "requesteddistance" (which for example could be 25 mi) along with another variable "genre" (a query on the artists). So the picture is the user might say I want to see all the "Rock" artists "25 mi" from me in "Vienna, VA".

Now that you can see my project here, here is my question.

In my discover app in the models.py file I could use some help. Through this discover app I want to be able to reference the Artists database. As you can see from above the
models.py file has the fields to establish an Artist and their information. Thus, when a request comes in to the discover app I want to be able to calculate the requested information and return that. Here's where I'm stuck... 

In my mind I feel that the appropriate way to do this is to basically create some sort of ForeignKey in the models.py of discover to the models.py of Artist? That way I don't have to have two databases of the same data but can simply reference the Artist database from the discover app.

Another idea I had was instead of creating a "field" link between the two to try to import the Artist class from the models.py to the models.py file of the discover app? Then from my views.py file in discover I can process the given information referenced and return the result.

Any input is welcome. I am striving to use Django's DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) methodolgy and try to reference the Artist database and do the actual processing in the discover application.

Thanks a lot for your advice,

JJ Zolper

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