Django error happens sometimes

Question

I am very confused right now. I was running a script in Django to create a fake database, circling through the same code over and over. I had already created over 2.5k objects when I get the following error:

ProgrammingError: autocommit cannot be used inside a transaction

I looked it up and got a bug-ticket that is apparently fixed, but that was for previos versions, I am using Django 1.6. Here is the full traceback:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ProgrammingError                          Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-31-0597bce30f92> in <module>()
----> 1 make_listeners()

<ipython-input-29-5697f122e144> in make_listeners()
     28                         seed = random.randint(0,len(user_ids_copy)-1)
     29                         requested_user = user_ids_copy.pop(seed)
---> 30                         user.functions.listen_to(requested_user)
     31                         print i, user.pk, number_seed, original_seed
     32                         number_seed -= 1

.../models.py in listen_to(self, user_id)
    715                 except User.DoesNotExist:
    716                         return 'User DoesNotExist'
--> 717                 request = ListenerRequest.objects.get_or_create(user=requesting, user_requested=requester, is_active=True)
    718                 if not request[1]:
    719                         if request.is_accepted:

/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/Django-1.6-py2.7.egg/django/db/models/manager.pyc in get_or_create(self, **kwargs)
    152
    153     def get_or_create(self, **kwargs):
--> 154         return self.get_queryset().get_or_create(**kwargs)
    155
    156     def create(self, **kwargs):

/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/Django-1.6-py2.7.egg/django/db/models/query.pyc in get_or_create(self, **kwargs)
    378                 obj = self.model(**params)
    379                 with transaction.atomic(using=self.db):
--> 380                     obj.save(force_insert=True, using=self.db)
    381                 return obj, True
    382             except DatabaseError:

/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/Django-1.6-py2.7.egg/django/db/transaction.pyc in __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_value, traceback)
    328                     connection.autocommit = True
    329                 else:
--> 330                     connection.set_autocommit(True)
    331             # Outermost block exit when autocommit was disabled.
    332             elif not connection.savepoint_ids and not connection.commit_on_exit:

/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/Django-1.6-py2.7.egg/django/db/backends/__init__.pyc in set_autocommit(self, autocommit)
    331         self.validate_no_atomic_block()
    332         self.ensure_connection()
--> 333         self._set_autocommit(autocommit)
    334         self.autocommit = autocommit
    335

/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/Django-1.6-py2.7.egg/django/db/backends/postgresql_psycopg2/base.pyc in _set_autocommit(self, autocommit)
    171     def _set_autocommit(self, autocommit):
    172         if self.psycopg2_version >= (2, 4, 2):
--> 173             self.connection.autocommit = autocommit
    174         else:
    175             if autocommit:

ProgrammingError: autocommit cannot be used inside a transaction

Why am I getting this error if I didn't have this problem for the first 2500 objects?

model:

as requested, here is the model for ListenerRequest since that appears to be causing the error:

class ListenerRequest(models.Model):
    listener_relationship_id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
    #user is the person asking to listen
    user = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='requests')
    #user_requested is the person being asked to be listen to
    user_requested = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='requested')
    date_requested = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    date_accepted = models.DateTimeField(null=True,blank=True)
    denied_flag = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    denied_date = models.DateTimeField(null=True,blank=True)
    unlistened_flag = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    unlistened_date = models.DateTimeField(null=True,blank=True)
    is_active = models.BooleanField(default=True)
    is_accepted = models.BooleanField(default=False)

Answer 1

If you're using django_postgrespool, the current version (as of writing) is swallowing errors and returning the generic error "ProgrammingError: autocommit cannot be used inside a transaction".

You can see the actual error by temporarily commenting out the following line in your settings.py

DATABASES['default']['ENGINE'] = 'django_postgrespool'

See this currently open issue for more details: https://github.com/kennethreitz/django-postgrespool/issues/24

Answer 2

Before trying to create the fake database, try the following:

from django.db import connection
curs = connection.cursor()
curs.execute('SET autocommit = 1')