In Django, how can I inherit a model that's not abstract as if it were abstract, so that I get a single table in the DB?

Question

Say I have a third party's model and it's not marked as abstract. I want to inherit it, add my own fields on top of that, and have it all be a single table in the database. Normally, that means I should inherit from an abstract model class, but I don't have that luxury in this case. Is there a way to have an intermediary step that creates an abstract class from the parent, so I can inherit from that one instead?

Answer 1

Try to create an intermediate abstract model and inherits from your third party model

    ThirdPartyModelClass(models.Model):
        #fields goes here

    AbstractThirdPartyModelClass(ThirdPartyModelClass):

       class Meta:
           abstract = True


    YourModel(AbstractThirdPartyModelClass,models.Model):
        #your fields

Answer 2

Also you can make a model with additional fields which will connect to the 'base' model by OneToOne relation. Using signals you can implement logic which will guarantee that every third-party model instance has 'extension' model instance created and connected.

I mean something like old recommended way to extend Django's User model:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/topics/auth/customizing/#extending-the-existing-user-model