id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
23774	Documentation on ordering by ForeignKey fields is misleading	David Wolever	nobody	"From the most recent documentation (https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/querysets/#order-by):

> If you try to order by a field that is a relation to another model, Django will use the default ordering on the related model (or order by the related model’s primary key if there is no Meta.ordering specified. For example:

>> Entry.objects.order_by('blog')
> ...is identical to:
>> Entry.objects.order_by('blog__id')
> ...since the Blog model has no default ordering specified.


But this is misleading, and should probably show ordering by the related model's ordering.


A quick example that might be more instructive::

{{{
class WidgetType(Model):
    id = AutoField(primary_key=True)
    label = CharField(max_length=16)
    class Meta:
        ordering = [""label""]

class Widget(Model):
    type = ForeignKey(WidgetType)
}}}

Trying to order `Widget` by `type` will produce:

{{{
>>> print Widget.objects.all().order_by(""type"").query
SELECT ""django_testproj_widget"".""id"", ""django_testproj_widget"".""type_id""
FROM ""django_testproj_widget""
INNER JOIN ""django_testproj_widgettype"" ON ( ""django_testproj_widget"".""type_id"" = ""django_testproj_widgettype"".""id"" )
ORDER BY ""django_testproj_widgettype"".""label"" ASC
}}}


**Edit** I can't read and totally missed the ""or order by the related model’s primary key if there is no Meta.ordering specified"" each time I read the documentation. I'll leave the ticket standing as I'm probably not the only one to hit this?"	Uncategorized	new	Documentation	1.7	Normal				Unreviewed	0	0	0	0	0	0