Django model naming convention

Question

What is the preferred naming convention for Django model classes?

just name it so you know what the model stands for – kender Dec 22 '08 at 10:16 — kender, Dec 22 '08 at 10:16

score 52 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 22 '08 at 11:42

52

Django models are just Python classes, so the Python naming conventions detailed in PEP-8 apply.

For example:

Person
Category
ZipCode

If Django fails to pluralize the class name properly when creating the corresponding table, you can easily override the pluralization by setting a custom verbose_name_plural field in an inner META class. For example:

class Story(models.Model):
    ...

    class Meta:
        verbose_name_plural = "stories"

answered Dec 22 '08 at 11:42

Baishampayan Ghose

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what plural name django will create for model name `Person`? – Hafiz Apr 07 '12 at 21:28
As per docs, I believe variable name is verbose_name_plural. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/db/models/#meta-options – daydreamer Jun 01 '12 at 13:49
didn't find any proof to this in pep-8 – techkuz Jun 24 '19 at 15:53

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 22 '08 at 10:32

3

As far as I know, the idea is that the class name should be singular and should use SentenceCase with no spaces. So you'd have names like:

Person
TelephoneNumber

Then the Django admin tool knows how to pluralise them. Doesn't work so nicely for names like:

Category

which gets pluralised as Categorys, but there we go...

Apart from that, just give it a name that means something to you and succinctly sums up what the class is meant to represent.

Ben

answered Dec 22 '08 at 10:32

Ben

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2

See ghoseb's answer above about correctly pluralizing something like Categories. – Michael Warkentin Dec 22 '08 at 18:27

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 19 '19 at 07:21

In most of programming languages, people prefer give a singular names to the objects/models because these models are also represented by tables in your database system. The minimalism is a good choice everytime to avoid some meaning conflicts in the future.

To exemplify; https://stackoverflow.com/a/5841297/2643226

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 25 '19 at 19:54

In adition, when you need related objects for a Model of more than one word, you can use the _set attribute. Example:

class ProcessRoom(models.Model):
...
    plant = models.ForeignKey("Plant", verbose_name='planta', on_delete=models.CASCADE)

Then, related objects will be:

plant = Plant.object.get(id=1)
process_rooms = plant.processroom_set.all

Django model naming convention

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