Django: durationField default value

Question:

What’s the right way to use Django’s DurationField?

When I use time_passed = models.DurationField(default=0):

  • Migrations work
  • Form defaults don’t work ('int' object has no attribute 'total_seconds')

When I use time_passed = models.DurationField(default=timedelta()):

  • Migrations don’t work (ValueError: Cannot serialize: datetime.timedelta(0))
  • Form defaults work

So what is the right way to use a default value on duration field or a workaround for this issue?

Asked By: MatZeg

||
Source

Answers:

The default should be a timedelta. This is a bug in Django and is set to be fixed in the 1.8.1 release.

See: https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/24566

So using default should be:

from datetime import timedelta


time_passed = models.DurationField(default=timedelta)
Answered By: MatZeg

MatZeg’s answer on this similar question shows that you can still pass in arguments as well:

pause = DurationField(default=timedelta(minutes=20))
Answered By: Allen Ellis