Django: How to have a multiple foreign keys references the same table in one table

Question

I know that normally Django would create a foreign key called user_id if I simply do something like

from django.db import models

class Order(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    comments = models.CharField(max_length=400)
    date_created = models.DateTimeField('created date')

class User(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    age = models.IntegerField()

but what if I need three distinct foreign key in Order that all points to User? The three foreign keys would be user_created, user_modified, and user_status.

Answer 1

The solution is actually straight forward:

class Order(models.Model):
    user_status = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='orders_status')
    user_created = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='orders_created')
    user_modified = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='orders_modified')

You just need to define separate related_names to avoid ambiguity when accessing the Order from the User object.