I'm surprised that this question apparently doesn't yet exist. If it does, please help me find it.
I want to use annotate (Count) and order_by, but I don't want to count every instance of a related object, only those that meet a certain criteron.
To wit, that I might list swallows by the number of green coconuts they have carried:
swallow.objects.annotate(num_coconuts=Count('coconuts_carried__husk__color = "green"').order_by('num_coconuts')
This should be the right way.
swallow.objects.filter(
coconuts_carried__husk__color="green"
).annotate(
num_coconuts=Count('coconuts_carried')
).order_by('num_coconuts')
Note that when you filter for a related field, in raw SQL it translates as a LEFT JOIN plus a WHERE. In the end the annotation will act on the result set, which contains only the related rows which are selected from the first filter.
For Django >= 1.8:
from django.db.models import Sum, Case, When, IntegerField
swallow.objects.annotate(
num_coconuts=Sum(Case(
When(coconuts_carried__husk__color="green", then=1),
output_field=IntegerField(),
))
).order_by('num_coconuts')