Django Models in Java-style File Structure

Question

I'm building a large Django application and would like to split my data models up in a 'class-per-file' structure, but in attempting to do so I'm running into circular dependency issues on some of the more complex models.

For example, I have three models, all in separate files:

class Book(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=35)
    author = models.ForeignKey(Author)
    genre = models.ForeignKey(Genre)

class Genre(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=20)
    sample_book = models.ForeignKey(Book)

class Author(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=60)
    preferred_genre = models.ForeignKey(Genre)

Since Book depends on Genre and Genre depends on book, when I import Book anywhere, it would start a chain of circular model dependencies since each file imports the model from the other files. How can I avoid this? This is the kind of project that will grow very large very quickly so I don't want to just lump all of the models into one file.

Answer 1

You can also specify the model name as a string:

preferred_genre = models.ForeignKey("Genre")