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POMost elegant approach for writing JSON data to a relational database using Django Models?
 

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  1. POMost elegant approach for writing JSON data to a relational database using Django Models?
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    <p>I have a typical Relational Database model laid out in Django where a typical model contains some <code>ForeignKeys</code>, some <code>ManyToManyFields</code>, and some fields that extend Django's <code>DateTimeField</code>. </p> <p>I want to save data that I am receiving in JSON format (not flat) from an external api. I wan't it such that data gets saved to respective tables (not the whole json string to one field). What is the most clean and simple approach to do this? Is there a library available to make this task simpler?</p> <p>Here's an example to clarify my question,</p> <p><strong>Models-</strong></p> <pre><code>class NinjaData(models.Model): id = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True, unique=True) name = models.CharField(max_length=60) birthdatetime = MyDateTimeField(null=True) deathdatetime = MyDatetimeField(null=True) skills = models.ManyToManyField(Skills, null=True) weapons = models.ManyToManyField(Weapons, null=True) master = models.ForeignKey(Master, null=True) class Skills(models.Model): id = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True, unique=True) name = models.CharField(max_length=60) difficulty = models.IntegerField(null=True) class Weapons(models.Model): id = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True, unique=True) name = models.CharField(max_length=60) weight = models.FloatField(null=True) class Master(models.Model): id = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True, unique=True) name = models.CharField(max_length=60) is_awesome = models.NullBooleanField() </code></pre> <p>now, I typically have to save json string data that I obtain from an external api (secret ninja api) into this model, json looks like this</p> <p><strong>JSON-</strong></p> <pre><code>{ "id":"1234", "name":"Hitori", "birthdatetime":"11/05/1999 20:30:00", "skills":[ { "id":"3456", "name":"stealth", "difficulty":"2" }, { "id":"678", "name":"karate", "difficulty":"1" } ], "weapons":[ { "id":"878", "name":"shuriken", "weight":"0.2" }, { "id":"574", "name":"katana", "weight":"0.5" } ], "master":{ "id":"4", "name":"Schi fu", "is_awesome":"true" } } </code></pre> <p>now logic for handling a typical ManyToManyField is fairly simple,</p> <p><strong>logic code -</strong> </p> <pre><code>data = json.loads(ninja_json) ninja = NinjaData.objects.create(id=data['id'], name=data['name']) if 'weapons' in data: weapons = data['weapons'] for weapon in weapons: w = Weapons.objects.get_or_create(**weapon) # create a new weapon in Weapon table ninja.weapons.add(w) if 'skills' in data: ... (skipping rest of the code for brevity) </code></pre> <p>There are many approaches that i could use,</p> <ul> <li>code above logic in the <code>view</code> function that does all the work of converting json to model instances</li> <li>code above logic overriding model's <code>__init__</code> method </li> <li>code above logic overriding model's <code>save()</code> method </li> <li>create a Manager for each model and code this logic inside each of its methods like <code>create</code>, <code>get_or_create</code>, <code>filter</code> etc. </li> <li>extend <code>ManyToManyField</code> and put it there,</li> <li>an external library?</li> </ul> <p>I would like to know if there is a <strong>single most obvious way</strong> to save data in this json form to database without coding the above logic multiple times, what would be the most elegant approach that you would suggest?</p> <p>Thanks all for reading the long post,</p>
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    1. COThanks about detailed explanation, I will follow this thread. Only a joke(sorry about it): you can do this with a MS data adapter: da = New OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter(sql, con) , da.update(ninja_json). ;)
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    2. COincidentally you don't need `id = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True, unique=True)` on your models, Django already creates that field automatically. You can still supply out-of-sequence id values when creating a new instance https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/instances/#explicitly-specifying-auto-primary-key-values
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    3. COYes I already know that I don't need to add an id auto field, django does that for me. But, as I told earlier, I am saving data obtained from an external api, which already contains a unique Id field, which I will need when i use that api later.
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