How to move a model between two Django apps (Django 1.7)

Question

So about a year ago I started a project and like all new developers I didn't really focus too much on the structure, however now I am further along with Django it has started to appear that my project layout mainly my models are horrible in structure.

I have models mainly held in a single app and really most of these models should be in their own individual apps, I did try and resolve this and move them with south however I found it tricky and really difficult due to foreign keys ect.

However due to Django 1.7 and built in support for migrations is there a better way to do this now?

Answer 1

This can be done fairly easily using migrations.SeparateDatabaseAndState. Basically, we use a database operation to rename the table concurrently with two state operations to remove the model from one app's history and create it in another's.

Remove from old app

python manage.py makemigrations old_app --empty

In the migration:

class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    dependencies = []

    database_operations = [
        migrations.AlterModelTable('TheModel', 'newapp_themodel')
    ]

    state_operations = [
        migrations.DeleteModel('TheModel')
    ]

    operations = [
        migrations.SeparateDatabaseAndState(
            database_operations=database_operations,
            state_operations=state_operations)
    ]

Add to new app

First, copy the model to the new app's model.py, then:

python manage.py makemigrations new_app

This will generate a migration with a naive CreateModel operation as the sole operation. Wrap that in a SeparateDatabaseAndState operation such that we don't try to recreate the table. Also include the prior migration as a dependency:

class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    dependencies = [
        ('old_app', 'above_migration')
    ]

    state_operations = [
        migrations.CreateModel(
            name='TheModel',
            fields=[
                ('id', models.AutoField(verbose_name='ID', serialize=False, auto_created=True, primary_key=True)),
            ],
            options={
                'db_table': 'newapp_themodel',
            },
            bases=(models.Model,),
        )
    ]

    operations = [
        migrations.SeparateDatabaseAndState(state_operations=state_operations)
    ]