Using south to refactor a Django model with inheritance

Question

I was wondering if the following migration is possible with Django south and still retain data.

Before:

I currently have two apps, one called tv, one called movies, each with a VideoFile model (simplified here):

tv/models.py:

class VideoFile(models.Model):
    show = models.ForeignKey(Show, blank=True, null=True)
    name = models.CharField(max_length=1024, blank=True)
    size = models.IntegerField(blank=True, null=True)
    ctime = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True)

movies/models.py:

class VideoFile(models.Model):
    movie = models.ForeignKey(Movie, blank=True, null=True)
    name = models.CharField(max_length=1024, blank=True)
    size = models.IntegerField(blank=True, null=True)
    ctime = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True)

After:

Because the two videofile objects are so similar I want to get rid of duplication and create a new model in a separate app called media that contains a generic VideoFile class and use inheritance to extend it:

media/models.py:

class VideoFile(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=1024, blank=True)
    size = models.IntegerField(blank=True, null=True)
    ctime = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True)

tv/models.py:

class VideoFile(media.models.VideoFile):
    show = models.ForeignKey(Show, blank=True, null=True)

movies/models.py:

class VideoFile(media.models.VideoFile):
    movie = models.ForeignKey(Movie, blank=True, null=True)

So my question is, how can I accomplish this with django-south and still maintain existing data?

All three these apps are already managed by south migrations and according to the south documentation it is bad practice to combine a schema and data migration and they recommend it should be done in a few steps.

I think it could be done using separate migrations like this (assuming media.VideoFile is already created)

1. Schema migration to rename all fields in tv.VideoFile and movies.VideoFile that will move to the new media.VideoFile model, maybe to something like old_name, old_size, etc
2. Schema migration to tv.VideoFile and movies.VideoFile to inherit from media.VideoFile
3. Data migration to copy old_name to name, old_size to size, etc
4. Scheme migration to remove old_ fields

Before I go through all that work, do you think that will work? Is there a better way?

If you're interested, the project is hosted here: http://code.google.com/p/medianav/

Answer 1

Check out response below by Paul for some notes on compatibility with newer versions of Django/South.

---

This seemed like an interesting problem, and I'm becoming a big fan of South, so I decided to look into this a bit. I built a test project on the abstract of what you've described above, and have successfully used South to perform the migration you are asking about. Here's a couple of notes before we get to the code:

• The South documentation recommends doing schema migrations and data migrations separate. I've followed suit in this.

• On the backend, Django represents an inherited table by automatically creating a OneToOne field on the inheriting model

• Understanding this, our South migration needs to properly handle the OneToOne field manually, however, in experimenting with this it seems that South (or perhaps Django itself) cannot create a OneToOne filed on multiple inherited tables with the same name. Because of this, I renamed each child-table in the movies/tv app to be respective to it's own app (ie. MovieVideoFile/ShowVideoFile).

• In playing with the actual data migration code, it seems South prefers to create the OneToOne field first, and then assign data to it. Assigning data to the OneToOne field during creation cause South to choke. (A fair compromise for all the coolness that is South).

So having said all that, I tried to keep a log of the console commands being issued. I'll interject commentary where necessary. The final code is at the bottom.

Command History

django-admin.py startproject southtest
manage.py startapp movies
manage.py startapp tv
manage.py syncdb
manage.py startmigration movies --initial
manage.py startmigration tv --initial
manage.py migrate
manage.py shell          # added some fake data...
manage.py startapp media
manage.py startmigration media --initial
manage.py migrate
# edited code, wrote new models, but left old ones intact
manage.py startmigration movies unified-videofile --auto
# create a new (blank) migration to hand-write data migration
manage.py startmigration movies videofile-to-movievideofile-data 
manage.py migrate
# edited code, wrote new models, but left old ones intact
manage.py startmigration tv unified-videofile --auto
# create a new (blank) migration to hand-write data migration
manage.py startmigration tv videofile-to-movievideofile-data
manage.py migrate
# removed old VideoFile model from apps
manage.py startmigration movies removed-videofile --auto
manage.py startmigration tv removed-videofile --auto
manage.py migrate

For space sake, and since the models invariably look the same in the end, I'm only going to demonstrate with 'movies' app.

movies/models.py

from django.db import models
from media.models import VideoFile as BaseVideoFile

# This model remains until the last migration, which deletes 
# it from the schema.  Note the name conflict with media.models
class VideoFile(models.Model):
    movie = models.ForeignKey(Movie, blank=True, null=True)
    name = models.CharField(max_length=1024, blank=True)
    size = models.IntegerField(blank=True, null=True)
    ctime = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True)

class MovieVideoFile(BaseVideoFile):
    movie = models.ForeignKey(Movie, blank=True, null=True, related_name='shows')

movies/migrations/0002_unified-videofile.py (schema migration)

from south.db import db
from django.db import models
from movies.models import *

class Migration:

    def forwards(self, orm):

        # Adding model 'MovieVideoFile'
        db.create_table('movies_movievideofile', (
            ('videofile_ptr', orm['movies.movievideofile:videofile_ptr']),
            ('movie', orm['movies.movievideofile:movie']),
        ))
        db.send_create_signal('movies', ['MovieVideoFile'])

    def backwards(self, orm):

        # Deleting model 'MovieVideoFile'
        db.delete_table('movies_movievideofile')

movies/migration/0003_videofile-to-movievideofile-data.py (data migration)

from south.db import db
from django.db import models
from movies.models import *

class Migration:

    def forwards(self, orm):
        for movie in orm['movies.videofile'].objects.all():
            new_movie = orm.MovieVideoFile.objects.create(movie = movie.movie,)
            new_movie.videofile_ptr = orm['media.VideoFile'].objects.create()

            # videofile_ptr must be created first before values can be assigned
            new_movie.videofile_ptr.name = movie.name
            new_movie.videofile_ptr.size = movie.size
            new_movie.videofile_ptr.ctime = movie.ctime
            new_movie.videofile_ptr.save()

    def backwards(self, orm):
        print 'No Backwards'

South is awesome!

Ok standard disclaimer: You're dealing with live data. I've given you working code here, but please use the --db-dry-run to test your schema. Always make a backup before trying anything, and generally be careful.

COMPATIBILITY NOTICE

I'm going to keep my original message intact, but South has since changed the command manage.py startmigration into manage.py schemamigration.