Ordered items in the database - alternative
Every now and then you need to have items in your database which have a specific order. As SQL does not save rows in any order, you need to take care about this for yourself. No - actually, you don't need to anymore. You can just use this file - it is designed as kind-of plug-in for the Django ORM. Usage is (due to use of meta-classes) quite simple. It is recommended to save this snippet into a separate file called `positional.py`. To use it, you only have to import `PositionalSortMixIn` from the `positional` module and inherit from it in your own, custom model (but *before* you inherit from `models.Model`, the order counts). Usage example: Add this to your `models.py` from positional import PositionalSortMixIn class MyModel(PositionalSortMixIn, models.Model): name = models.CharField(maxlength=200, unique=True) Now you need to create the database tables: `PositionalSortMixIn` will automatically add a `postition` field to your model. In your views you can use it simply with `MyModel.objects.all().order_by('position')` and you get the objects sorted by their position. Of course you can move the objects down and up, by using `move_up()`, `move_down()` etc. In case you feel you have seen this code somewhere - right, this snippet is a modified version of [snippet #245](/snippets/245/) which I made earlier. It is basically the same code but uses another approach to display the data in an ordered way. Instead of overriding the `Manager` it adds the `position` field to `Meta.ordering`. Of course, all of this is done automatically, you only need to use `YourItem.objects.all()` to get the items in an ordered way. Update: Now you can call your custom managers `object` as long as the default manager (the one that is defined first) still returns all objects. This Mix-in absolutely needs to be able to access all elements saved. In case you find any errors just write a comment, updated versions are published here from time to time as new bugs are found and fixed.
- db
- orm
- database
- plugin
- mixin