Django is a great framework, but sometimes you just want to use its ORM without web server function. This blog will introduce how to do it.
1. Step
1.1. Setup environment
Create a virtual environment named ormOnlyEnv and then activate it
ormOnlyEnvScriptsactivate
Copy the requirement.txt to the same directory as the folder ormOnlyEnv and install it using below command.
Copy manage.py and settings.py to the directory and create directory db. Your project structure should look like as below:
1.2. Create Model class
Create models.py under directory db. Place your own model (data stored to db) in models.py. We use the class Person as an example.
models.py
from django.utils import timezone
## Create your models here.
class Person(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(
max_length=50,
blank=False
)
age = models.IntegerField()
birth_date = models.DateTimeField(
blank=False
)
1.3. Generate database and table
For simplicity, in this example, we use sqlite.
Check if there is any migration script generated and output
(no migrations) –> No script is generated
Generate script and output
dbmigrations001_initial.py
– Create model Person
Generate table in database and output
dbmigrations001_initial.py
– Create model Person
1.3.1. Remark
If you have update models.py, remember to run following commands again to synchronize database.
python manage.py migrate
2. Create your own script
Here is the most IMPORTANT point, place the following code at the TOP in the script file to initialize Django ORM in the beginning.
os.environ.setdefault(‘DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE‘, ‘settings‘)
import django
django.setup()
Save the data to db by calling the model class
from db.models import Person
print(“Project started!!“)
person = Person()
person.name = ‘John Doe‘
person.age = 30
person.birth_date = datetime.datetime(1963, 2, 5)
person.save()
print(“Saved!!“)
Whole file main.py
## Django specific settings (Please this BEFORE import model class)
##############################
import django
import os
os.environ.setdefault(‘DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE‘, ‘settings‘)
django.setup()
##############################
import datetime
from db.models import Person
print(“Project started!!“)
person = Person()
person.name = ‘John Doe‘
person.age = 30
person.birth_date = datetime.datetime(1963, 2, 5)
person.save()
print(“Saved!!“)
Run the files and you can see the record is saved to db
Saved!!
3. Git repo
https://github.com/ivanyu199012/16-DjangoUsedOrmOnly/
4. Reason I wrote this blog
Recently, I needed to build a python script to save some records to database. I considered manually creating tables and coding sql insert command, but this would cost a lot of times.
I remembered that in the past, I used Django ORM only without the web server to save records to database, so I decided to use it.
I forgot how to do it, so I spent some time to test and refresh my memory and finally I succeed it. This blog is wrote so that in the future, if I forgot how to do it, I can check this blog and hope it can also help the others.
Thanks for reading.😀
