Composite primary key in django

Question

I have a legacy db table which has composite primary key. I don’t think I will be able to change the structure to include a surrogate key, as there is some code written that uses that table. And in django, I cannot use that table, as it doesn’t have a primary key(non-composite).

Do django models support composite primary keys? If not, is there any workaround without changing the structure of the table?

P.S. I am using postgresql.

Asked By: khajvah

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Source

Answer 1

Try similar below code:

class MyTable(models.Model):
    class Meta:
        unique_together = (('key1', 'key2'),)

    key1 = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True)
    key2 = models.IntegerField()

or if you want only unique mixed fields:

class MyTable(models.Model):
    class Meta:
        unique_together = (('key1', 'key2'),)

    key1 = models.IntegerField()
    key2 = models.IntegerField()

EDIT: I would like to note that there is a problem with this approach if there are 3 columns. Update queries don’t work because it tries to update (puts pk fields right after “SET”) the fields that are unique together and obviously fails.

Answered By: M.javid

Answer 2

Another option is to set managed=False in the model’s Meta, then manually create the table.

class MyTable(models.Model):
    foo = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True)
    bar = models.IntegerField()
    baz = models.IntegerField()

    class Meta:
        managed = False
        db_table = 'myapp_mytable'

    def __repr__(self):
        return f'<MyTable: MyTable object ({self.foo}, {self.bar}, {self.baz)>'

In a postgres shell:

CREATE TABLE myapp_mytable (
    foo INTEGER NOT NULL,
    bar INTEGER NOT NULL,
    baz INTEGER NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(foo, bar, baz)
);

It appears to behave correctly:

>>> MyTable.objects.create(foo=1, bar=1, baz=1)
<MyTable: MyTable object (1, 1, 1)>

>>> MyTable.objects.create(foo=1, bar=1, baz=2)
<MyTable: MyTable object (1, 1, 2)>

>>> MyTable.objects.create(foo=1, bar=1, baz=2)
django.db.utils.IntegrityError: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "myapp_mytable_pkey"
DETAIL:  Key (foo, bar, baz)=(1, 1, 2) already exists.

Note that this is only tested in Django 3.x, so I’m not sure if it works in older versions.

Answered By: Lord Elrond

Answer 3

The accepted answer is fine. However, it’s a little old. unique_together may be deprecated in favor of UniqueConstraint. So, the better way of doing this would be;

UniqueConstraint(fields = ['key1', 'key2'], name = 'constraint_name')

Answered By: TechniCollins

Answer 4

I solved this with virtual field inherited from django AutoField, that combines a values from several fields into single JSON dict.

That makes such models, compatible with django admin and genetic views.

$ pip install django-viewflow --pre

from viewflow.fields import CompositeKey

class Seat(models.Model):
    id = CompositeKey(columns=['aircraft_code', 'seat_no'])
    aircraft_code = models.ForeignKey(
        Aircraft, models.DO_NOTHING,
        db_column='aircraft_code'
    )
    seat_no = models.CharField(max_length=4)

This makes possible to access as to legacy databases, as to PostgreSQL TimeScaleDB tables

Answered By: kmmbvnr

Composite primary key in django

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