CookBook - Data Models - Splitting models across multiple files

To split models across multiple files, you can do the following (works at least with revision 2819; verified to work without the Meta class app_labels, with main branch revision 7013):

The important thing to notice here is the app_label attribute in the Meta class. If that is omitted, a subsequent manage.py syncdb run will not pick up these models.

NOTE: When #2982 gets applied you won't need the Meta class anymore, so if this link: #2982 has a strike-through and you are running svn, you don't need the Meta class.

apps/polls/models/__init__.py:

from poll import Poll
from choice import Choice

apps/polls/models/poll.py:

from django.db import models

class Poll(models.Model):
    question = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField('date published')

    class Meta:
        app_label = 'polls'

apps/polls/models/choice.py:

from django.db import models
from poll import Poll

class Choice(models.Model):
    poll = models.ForeignKey(Poll)
    choice = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    votes = models.IntegerField()

    class Meta:
        app_label = 'polls'

Ok so the example is a bit stupid but it should illustrate the point.

Providing initial sql data for models

If you provide initial sql data for you models (as described in ​Providing initial SQL data) you should notice that at least in Django 0.95 the path for sql files is different when this recipe is applied. In this case the path is:

<appname>/models/sql/<modelname>.sql