Following users like twitter in Django, how would you do it?
database-design, django, django-models, python, twitter
Solution
First, you should understand how to store additional information about users. It requires another model that has a relation to one user, the "profile" model.
Then, you could use an M2M field, assuming you'd use django-annoying, you could define your user profile model as such:
from django.db import models
from annoying.fields import AutoOneToOneField
class UserProfile(models.Model):
user = AutoOneToOneField('auth.user')
follows = models.ManyToManyField('UserProfile', related_name='followed_by')
def __unicode__(self):
return self.user.username
And use it as such:
In [1]: tim, c = User.objects.get_or_create(username='tim')
In [2]: chris, c = User.objects.get_or_create(username='chris')
In [3]: tim.userprofile.follows.add(chris.userprofile) # chris follows tim
In [4]: tim.userprofile.follows.all() # list of userprofiles of users that tim follows
Out[4]: [<UserProfile: chris>]
In [5]: chris.userprofile.followed_by.all() # list of userprofiles of users that follow chris
Out[5]: [<UserProfile: tim>]
Also, note that you could check / reuse apps like django-subscription, django-actstream, django-social (harder to use probably)...
You might want to take a look at the django packages for notifications and activities as they all require some follow/subscription database design.
Problem
I am playing with relationships in Django/python and I am wondering how you guys would create a relationship between a User and his followers and a Follower to the users he follows. Would love to read your opinion...