How to monkey patch Django?

Question

I came upon this post on monkey patching Django:

from django.contrib.auth.models import User

User.add_to_class('openid', models.CharField(max_length=250,blank=True))

def get_user_name(self):
    if self.first_name or self.last_name:
        return self.first_name + " " + self.last_name
    return self.username

User.add_to_class("get_user_name",get_user_name)

I understand that this isn't ideal and it's better to add fields and functions to User through a separate model Profile.

With that said, I just want to understand how this would work:

1. Where would I put the monkey patching code?

2. When is the code run -- just once? once per Python interpreter startup? once per request?

3. Presumably I'd still need to change the DB schema. So if I dropped the table User and ran ./manage.py syncdb, would syncdb "know" that a new field has been added to User? If not how do I change the schema?

Answer 1

put the file monkey_patching.py in any of your apps and import it in app's __init__.py file. ie:

app/monkey_patching.py

#app/monkey_patching.py
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

User.add_to_class('openid', models.CharField(max_length=250,blank=True))

def get_user_name(self):
    if self.first_name or self.last_name:
        return self.first_name + " " + self.last_name
    return self.username

User.add_to_class("get_user_name",get_user_name)

app/__init__.py

#app/__init__.py
import monkey_patching