Database API

South ships with a full database-agnostic API for performing schema changes on databases, much like Django’s ORM provides data manipulation support.

Currently, South supports:

  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • SQLite
  • Microsoft SQL Server (beta support)
  • Oracle (alpha support)

Accessing The API

South automatically exposes the correct set of database API operations as south.db.db; it detects which database backend you’re using from your Django settings file. It’s usually imported using:

from south.db import db

If you’re using multiple database support (Django 1.2 and higher), there’s a corresponding south.db.dbs dictionary which contains a DatabaseOperations object (the object which has the methods defined above) for each database alias in your configuration file:

from south.db import dbs
dbs['users'].create_table(...)

You can tell which backend you’re talking to inside of a migration by examining db.backend_name - it will be one of postgres, mysql, sqlite3, pyodbc or oracle.

Database-Specific Issues

South provides a large amount of features, and not all features are supported by all database backends.

  • PostgreSQL supports all of the South features; if you’re unsure which database engine to pick, it’s the one we recommend for migrating on.
  • MySQL doesn’t have transaction support for schema modification, meaning that if a migration fails to apply, the database is left in an inconsistent state, and you’ll probably have to manually fix it. South will try and sanity-check migrations in a dry-run phase, and give you hints of what to do when it fails, however.
  • SQLite doesn’t natively support much schema altering at all, but South has workarounds to allow deletion/altering of columns. Unique indexes are still unsupported, however; South will silently ignore any such commands.
  • SQL Server has been supported for a while, and works in theory, but the implementation itself may have bugs, as it’s a contributed module and isn’t under primary development. Patches and bug reports are welcome.
  • Oracle is a new module as of the 0.7 release, and so is very much alpha. The most common operations work, but others may be missing completely; we welcome bug reports and patches against it (as with all other modules).

Methods

These are how you perform changes on the database. See Accessing The API to see how to get access to the db object.

db.add_column

db.add_column(table_name, field_name, field, keep_default=True)

Adds a column called field_name to the table table_name, of the type specified by the field instance field.

If keep_default is True, then any default value specified on the field will be added to the database schema for that column permanently. If not, then the default is only used when adding the column, and then dropped afterwards.

Note that the default value for fields given here is only ever used when adding the column to a non-empty table; the default used by the ORM in your application is the one specified on the field in your models.py file, as Django handles adding default values before the query hits the database.

The only case where having the default stored in the database as well would make a difference would be where you are interacting with the database from somewhere else, or Django doesn’t know about the added column at all.

Also, note that the name you give for the column is the field name, not the column name - if the field you pass in is a ForeignKey, for example, the real column name will have _id on the end.

Examples

A normal column addition (the column is nullable, so all existing rows will have it set to NULL):

db.add_column('core_profile', 'height', models.IntegerField(null=True))

Providing a default value instead, so all current rows will get this value for ‘height’:

db.add_column('core_profile', 'height', models.IntegerField(default=-1))

Same as above, but the default is not left in the database schema:

db.add_column('core_profile', 'height', models.IntegerField(default=-1), keep_default=False)

db.alter_column

db.alter_column(table_name, column_name, field, explicit_name=True)

Alters the column column_name on the table table_name to match field. Note that this cannot alter all field attributes; for example, if you want to make a field unique=True, you should instead use db.add_index with unique=True, and if you want to make it a primary key, you should look into db.drop_primary_key and db.create_primary_key.

If explicit_name is false, ForeignKey? fields will have _id appended to the end of the given column name - this lets you address fields as they are represented in the model itself, rather than as the column name.

Examples

A simple change of the length of a VARCHAR column:

# Assume the table was created with name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
db.alter_column('core_nation', 'name', models.CharField(max_length=200))

We can also change it to a compatible field type:

db.alter_column('core_nation', 'name', models.TextField())

If we have a ForeignKey? named ‘user’, we can address it without the implicit ‘_id’ on the end:

db.alter_column('core_profile', 'user', models.ForeignKey(orm['auth.User'], null=True, blank=True), explicit_name=False)

Or you can specify the same operation with an explicit name:

db.alter_column('core_profile', 'user_id', models.ForeignKey(orm['auth.User'], null=True, blank=True))

db.clear_table

db.clear_table(table_name)

Deletes all rows from the table (truncation). Never used by South’s autogenerators, but can prove useful if you’re writing data migrations.

Examples

Clear all cached geocode results, as the schema is changing:

db.clear_table('core_geocoded')
db.add_column('core_geocoded', ...)

db.commit_transaction

db.commit_transaction()

Commits the transaction started at a db.start_transaction call.

db.create_index

db.create_index(table_name, column_names, unique=False, db_tablespace='')

Creates an index on the list of columns column_names on the table table_name.

By default, the index is simply for speed; if you would like a unique index, then specify unique=True, although you’re better off using db.create_unique for that.

db_tablespace is an Oracle-specific option, and it’s likely you won’t need to use it.

Examples

Creating an index on the ‘name’ column:

db.create_index('core_profile', ['name'])

Creating a unique index on the combination of ‘name’ and ‘age’ columns:

db.create_index('core_profile', ['name', 'age'], unique=True)

db.create_primary_key

db.create_primary_key(table_name, columns)

Creates a primary key spanning the given columns for the table. Remember, you can only have one primary key per table; use db.delete_primary_key first if you already have one.

Examples

Swapping from the id to uuid as a primary key:

db.delete_primary_key('core_upload')
db.create_primary_key('core_upload', ['uuid'])

Adding a new composite primary key on “first name” and “last name”:

db.create_primary_key('core_people', ['first_name', 'last_name'])

db.create_table

db.create_table(table_name, fields)
fields = ((field_name, models.SomeField(somearg=4)), ...)

This call creates a table called table_name in the database with the schema specified by fields, which is a tuple of (field_name, field_instance) tuples.

Note that this call will not automatically add an id column; you are responsible for doing that.

We recommend you create calls to this function using schemamigration, either in --auto mode, or by using --add-model.

Examples

A simple table, with one field, name, and the default id column:

db.create_table('core_planet', (
    ('id', models.AutoField(primary_key=True)),
    ('name', models.CharField(unique=True, max_length=50)),
))

A more complex table, which uses the ORM Freezer for its foreign keys:

db.create_table('core_nation', (
    ('name', models.CharField(max_length=255)),
    ('short_name', models.CharField(max_length=50)),
    ('slug', models.SlugField(unique=True)),
    ('planet', models.ForeignKey(orm.Planet, related_name="nations")),
    ('flag', models.ForeignKey(orm.Flag, related_name="nations")),
    ('planet_name', models.CharField(max_length=50)),
    ('id', models.AutoField(primary_key=True)),
))

db.create_unique

create_unique(table_name, columns)

Creates a unique index or constraint on the list of columns columns on the table table_name.

Examples

Declare the pair of fields first_name and last_name to be unique:

db.create_unique('core_people', ['first_name', 'last_name'])

db.delete_column

db.delete_column(table_name, column_name)

Deletes the column column_name from the table table_name.

Examples

Delete a column from a table:

db.delete_column('core_nation', 'title')

db.delete_index

db.delete_index(table_name, column_names, db_tablespace='')

Deletes an index created by db.create_index or one of the other South functions. Pass the column_names in exactly the same order as the other call to ensure this works; we use a hashing algorithm to make sure you can delete migrations by only specifying column names.

db_tablespace is an Oracle-specific option.

Examples

Deleting an index on ‘name’:

db.delete_index('core_profile', ['name'])

Deleting the unique index on the combination of ‘name’ and ‘age’ columns (from the db.create_index examples):

db.delete_index('core_profile', ['name', 'age'])

db.delete_foreign_key

delete_foreign_key(table_name, column)

Drops any foreign key constraints on the given column, if the database backend supported them in the first place.

Examples

Remove the foreign key constraint from user_id:

db.delete_foreign_key(‘core_people’, ‘user_id’)

db.delete_primary_key

db.delete_primary_key(table_name)

Deletes the current primary key constraint on the table. Does not remove the columns the primary key was using.

Examples

Swapping from the id to uuid as a primary key:

db.delete_primary_key('core_upload')
db.create_primary_key('core_upload', ['uuid'])

db.delete_table

db.delete_table(table_name, cascade=True)

Deletes (drops) the named table from the database. If cascade is True, drops any related constraints as well.

Examples

Usual call:

db.delete_table("core_planet")

Not cascading (beware, may fail):

db.delete_table("core_planet", cascade=False)

db.delete_unique

delete_unique(table_name, columns)

Deletes a unique index or constraint on the list of columns columns on the table table_name. The constraint/index. must already exist.

Examples

Declare the pair of fields first_name and last_name to no longer be unique:

db.delete_unique('core_people', ['first_name', 'last_name'])

db.execute

db.execute(sql, params=[])

Executes the single raw SQL statement sql on the database; optionally use params to replace the %s instances in sql (this is the recommended way of doing parameters, as it escapes them correctly for all databases).

If you want to execute a series of SQL statements instead, use db.execute_many.

Note that you should avoid using raw SQL wherever possible, as it will break the database abstraction in many cases. If you want to handle data, consider using the ORM Freezer, and remember that many operations such as creating indexes and changing primary keys have functions in the DB layer.

If there’s a common operation you’d like to see added to the DB abstraction layer in South, consider asking on the mailing list or creating a ticket.

Examples

VACUUMing a table:

db.execute("VACUUM ANALYZE core_profile")

Updating values (this sort of task should really be done using the frozen ORM):

db.execute("UPDATE core_profile SET name = %s WHERE name = %s", ["andy", "andrew"])

db.execute_many

db.execute_many(sql, regex=r"(?mx) ([^';]* (?:'[^']*'[^';]*)*)", comment_regex=r"(?mx) (?:^\s*$)|(?:--.*$)")

Executes the given multi-statement SQL string sql. The two parameters are the regular expressions for splitting up statements (regex) and removing comments (comment_regex). We recommend you leave these at their default values, as they work on almost all SQL files.

If you only want to execute a single SQL statement, consider using db.execute, as it offers parameter escaping, and the regexes sometimes get the splitting wrong.

Examples

Run the PostGIS initialisation file:

db.execute_many(open("/path/to/lwpostgis.sql").read())

db.rename_column

db.rename_column(table_name, column_name, new_column_name)

Renames the column column_name in table table_name to new_column_name.

Examples

Simple rename:

db.rename_column('core_nation', 'name', 'title')

db.rename_table

db.rename_table(table_name, new_table_name)

Renames the table table_name to the new name new_table_name.

This won’t affect what tables your models are looking for, of course; this is useful, for example, if you’ve renamed a model (and don’t want to specify the old table name in Meta).

Examples

Simple rename:

db.rename_table('core_profile', 'core_userprofile')

db.rollback_transaction

db.rollback_transaction()

Rolls back the transaction started at a db.start_transaction call.

db.send_create_signal

db.send_create_signal(app_label, model_names)

Sends the post_syncdb signal for the given models model_names in the app app_label.

This signal is used by various bits of django internals - such as contenttypes - to hook new models into themselves, so you should really call it after the relevant db.create_table call. startmigration will add this automatically for you.

Note that the signals are not sent until the end of the whole migration sequence, so your handlers will not get called until all migrations are done. This is so that your handlers can deal with the most recent version of the model’s schema, rather than the one in the migration where the signal is originally sent.

Examples

Sending a signal for the ‘Profile’ and ‘Planet’ models in my app ‘core’:

db.send_create_signal('core', ['Profile', 'Planet'])

db.start_transaction

db.start_transaction()

Wraps the following code (until it meets a db.rollback_transaction or db.commit_transaction call) in a transaction.