Django Update Model
Add Fields in the Model
To add a field to a table after it is created, open the
models.py file, and make your changes:
my_tennis_club/members/models.py:
from django.db import models
class Member(models.Model):
firstname = models.CharField(max_length=255)
lastname = models.CharField(max_length=255)
phone = models.IntegerField()
joined_date = models.DateField()
As you can see, we want to add phone and
joined_date to our Member Model.
This is a change in the Model's structure, and therefor we have to make a migration to tell Django that it has to update the database:
python manage.py makemigrations members
Note: Make sure you are back in the virtual environment before running the command.
The command above will result in a prompt, because we try to add fields that are not allowed to be null, to a table that already contains records.
As you can see, Django asks if we want to provide the fields with a specific value, or if we want to stop the migration and fix it in the model:
python manage.py makemigrations members
You are trying to add a non-nullable field 'joined_date' to members without a default;
we can't do that (the database needs something to populate existing rows).
Please select a fix:
1) Provide a one-off default now (will be set on all existing rows with a null value for this column)
2) Quit, and let me add a default in models.py
Select an option:
I will select option 2, and open the models.py file again and allow NULL values for the two new fields:
my_tennis_club/members/models.py:
from django.db import models
class Member(models.Model):
firstname = models.CharField(max_length=255)
lastname = models.CharField(max_length=255)
phone = models.IntegerField(null=True)
joined_date = models.DateField(null=True)
And make the migration once again:
python manage.py makemigrations members
Which will result in this:
Migrations for 'members':
members\migrations\0002_member_joined_date_member_phone.py
- Add field
joined_date to member
- Add field
phone to member
Run the migrate command:
python manage.py migrate
Which will result in this output:
Operations to perform:
Apply all migrations: admin, auth, contenttypes, members, sessions
Running migrations:
Applying members.0002_member_joined_date_member_phone... OK
(myworld) C:\Users\Your Name\myworld\my_tennis_club>
Insert Data
We can insert data to the two new fields with the same approach as we did in the Update Data chapter:
First we enter the Python Shell:
python manage.py shell
Now we are in the shell, the result should be something like this:
Python 3.13.2 (tags/v3.13.2:4f8bb39, Feb 4 2025, 15:23:48) [MSC v.1942 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
(InteractiveConsole)
>>>
At the bottom, after the three >>> write the following (and hit [enter] for each line):
>>> from members.models import Member
>>> x = Member.objects.all()[0]
>>> x.phone = 5551234
>>> x.joined_date = '2022-01-05'
>>> x.save()
This will insert a phone number and a date in the Member Model, at least for the first record, the four remaining records will for now be left empty. We will deal with them later in the tutorial.
Execute this command to see if the Member table got updated:
>>> Member.objects.all().values()
The result should look like this:
<QuerySet [
{'id': 1, 'firstname': 'Emil', 'lastname': 'Refsnes', 'phone': 5551234, 'joined_date': datetime.date(2022, 1, 5)},
{'id': 2, 'firstname': 'Tobias', 'lastname': 'Refsnes', 'phone': None, 'joined_date': None},
{'id': 3, 'firstname': 'Linus', 'lastname': 'Refsnes', 'phone': None, 'joined_date': None},
{'id': 4, 'firstname': 'Lene', 'lastname': 'Refsnes', 'phone': None, 'joined_date': None},
{'id': 5, 'firstname': 'Stalikken', 'lastname': 'Refsnes', 'phone': None, 'joined_date': None}]>
