It should be possible to disable the creation of database key constraints in ForeignKey Field

[mohlendo]

I have the following model:

class A(models.Model):
  """
  A alias_name of 'A' can have various name
  """
  name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
  alias_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)

class B(models.Model):
   a = models.ForeignKey(A, related_name='bs', to_field='alias_name', db_column='a_name', create_constraint=False)
   user = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='bs')

During syncdb the ForeignKey from A to B should not be created as a key constraint. Since B has a foreign key to the alias_name of A and one alias_name is mappend to various names, B gets all As with a specific alias_name. This is more or less a n-m relation without the extra table.

See attached patch...

[mohlendo]

simple patch for this ticket

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

I think that if you want to do this, you should create a special field to do so. A ForeignKey is traditionally understood as modelling a many-to-one relation, not many-to-many, and that's certainly the case in Django. Extending the meaning beyond that would confuse things a bit.

It's an interesting idea, but not really how a database models things, so you will need to do some manual validation in your custom field to ensure data integrity.

[(none)]

Milestone post-1.0 deleted