Python – In Django, how does one filter a QuerySet with dynamic field lookups

djangodjango-modelspython

Given a class:

from django.db import models

class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=20)

Is it possible, and if so how, to have a QuerySet that filters based on dynamic arguments? For example:

 # Instead of:
 Person.objects.filter(name__startswith='B')
 # ... and:
 Person.objects.filter(name__endswith='B')

 # ... is there some way, given:
 filter_by = '{0}__{1}'.format('name', 'startswith')
 filter_value = 'B'

 # ... that you can run the equivalent of this?
 Person.objects.filter(filter_by=filter_value)
 # ... which will throw an exception, since `filter_by` is not
 # an attribute of `Person`.

Best Answer

Python's argument expansion may be used to solve this problem:

kwargs = {
    '{0}__{1}'.format('name', 'startswith'): 'A',
    '{0}__{1}'.format('name', 'endswith'): 'Z'
}

Person.objects.filter(**kwargs)

This is a very common and useful Python idiom.

Related Solutions

Python – How to do a not equal in Django queryset filtering

You can use Q objects for this. They can be negated with the ~ operator and combined much like normal Python expressions:

from myapp.models import Entry
from django.db.models import Q

Entry.objects.filter(~Q(id=3))

will return all entries except the one(s) with 3 as their ID:

[<Entry: Entry object>, <Entry: Entry object>, <Entry: Entry object>, ...]

How to filter empty or NULL names in a QuerySet

You could do this:

Name.objects.exclude(alias__isnull=True)

If you need to exclude null values and empty strings, the preferred way to do so is to chain together the conditions like so:

Name.objects.exclude(alias__isnull=True).exclude(alias__exact='')

Chaining these methods together basically checks each condition independently: in the above example, we exclude rows where alias is either null or an empty string, so you get all Name objects that have a not-null, not-empty alias field. The generated SQL would look something like:

SELECT * FROM Name WHERE alias IS NOT NULL AND alias != ""

You can also pass multiple arguments to a single call to exclude, which would ensure that only objects that meet every condition get excluded:

Name.objects.exclude(some_field=True, other_field=True)

Here, rows in which some_field and other_field are true get excluded, so we get all rows where both fields are not true. The generated SQL code would look a little like this:

SELECT * FROM Name WHERE NOT (some_field = TRUE AND other_field = TRUE)

Alternatively, if your logic is more complex than that, you could use Django's Q objects:

from django.db.models import Q
Name.objects.exclude(Q(alias__isnull=True) | Q(alias__exact=''))

For more info see this page and this page in the Django docs.

_{As an aside: My SQL examples are just an analogy--the actual generated SQL code will probably look different. You'll get a deeper understanding of how Django queries work by actually looking at the SQL they generate.}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Python – How to do a not equal in Django queryset filtering

How to filter empty or NULL names in a QuerySet

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