I want to know if any one could give a complete list of things which need to be done when we want to remove a model from Django. I know that a similar question was asked. But it seems to be several years ago, when people were still using South to deal with Database. So I expect an answer for the recent version of Django.
I conclude what I know as follows:
- Delete the codes for model from model.py
- Make sure that no other file imports this model or uses them
(admin.py, views.py, etc)
- Run makemigrations and migrate commands
- Since Django doesn't clean database for you, you delete the table of
this model manually from you database
- Also note that there is a table called ContentTypes, which keeps
records about the info our your every model. So you need to delete
the record for this model manually (But I don't know how to do it
exactly. Would any one give some explanation?)
These are all the things I know. Is there anything wrong? And did I forget anything? Maybe I'm over-cautious, but I'd like to keep the database clean.
Thanks a lot!
In Django 1.7, this is actually much simpler than you think. Let's say you have an app, books
, with two models: Book
and BookReview
. You want to remove the Book
model.
- Remove all references to the
Book
model in your code. For example, remove the ForeignKey('books.Book')
field on the BookReview
model. There is no need to make a separate migration for this change.
- Remove the code for the
Book
model from books/models.py
. Now, create a migration (manage.py makemigrations
). If you look at the migration that is generated, it should include a migrations.DeleteModel
operation.
Run the auto-generated migration (manage.py migrate
), and you should be asked about the relevant ContentType
objects that are no longer needed:
Running migrations:
Applying books.0002_auto_20150314_0604... OK
The following content types are stale and need to be deleted:
books | book
Any objects related to these content types by a foreign key will also
be deleted. Are you sure you want to delete these content types?
You probably do want to delete the content types. If you don't want to be asked for input, you can use manage.py migrate --noinput
.
The DeleteModel
operation in this migration will drop the books_book
table in your database, so you don't have to worry about manually cleaning up at all.