Keeping track of changes - Django

Question

I have various models of which I would like to keep track and collect statistical data.

The problem is how to store the changes throughout time.

I thought of various alternative:

• Storing a log in a TextField, open it and update it every time the model is saved.
• Alternatively pickle a list and store it in a TextField.
• Save logs on hard drive.

---

What are your suggestions?

Answer 1

Don't reinvent the wheel.. Use django-reversion for logging changes.

I'd break statistics off into a separate model though.

Answer 2

Quoth my elementary chemistry teacher: "If you don't write it down, it didn't happen", therefore save logs in a file.

Since the log information is disjoint from your application data (it's meta-data, actually), keep them separate. You could log to a database table but it should be distinct from your model.

Text pickle data is difficult for humans to read, binary pickle data even more so; log in an easily parsed format and the data can be imported into analysis software easily.