django models without database

Question

I know the automatic setting is to have any models you define in models.py become database tables.

I am trying to define models that won't be tables. They need to store dynamic data (that we get and configure from APIs), every time a user searches for something. This data needs to be assembled, and then when the user is finished, discarded.

previously I was using database tables for this. It allowed me to do things like "Trips.objects.all" in any view, and pass that to any template, since it all came from one data source. I've heard you can just not "save" the model instantiation, and then it doesn't save to the database, but I need to access this data (that I've assembled in one view), in multiple other views, to manipulate it and display it . . . if i don't save i can't access it, if i do save, then its in a database (which would have concurrency issues with multiple users)

I don't really want to pass around a dictionary/list, and I'm not even sure how i was do that if I had to.

ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Another option may be to use:

class Meta:     managed = False 

to prevent Django from creating a database table.

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/models/options/#managed

Answer 2

Just sounds like a regular Class to me.

You can put it into models.py if you like, just don't subclass it on django.db.models.Model. Or you can put it in any python file imported into the scope of whereever you want to use it.

Perhaps use the middleware to instantiate it when request comes in and discard when request is finished. One access strategy might be to attach it to the request object itself but ymmv.