Moving django models into their own files

Question

In the name of maintainability, I moved some of my larger models to their own files. So before i had this:

app/
  models.py

and now I have this:

app/
  models/
    __init__.py
    model_a.py
    model_b.py

This works fine, but when I use manage.py to do sync db, it doesn't create a table for these models anymore.

Am I forgetting something?

Thanks,

Answer 1

Models must be found in module named app.models where app is an app name. So you should write in app/models/__init__.py file

 from model_a import * 
 from model_b import * 

In Django < 1.7

Note fron django 1.7 onwards this is not neccessary.

Moreover --- (that's what I had problem with) you will have to manually update app_label attribute for your models, so write:

 __all__ = ["ModelA", "ModelA1"]

 class ModelA(models.Model):
      class Meta: 
          app_label = 'your_app'

without it app will be set incorrectly by django.

If you are afreid that from model_a import * are evil you allways can set up __all__ attributes in all modules.

Answer 2

You need to set Meta.app_label for each of the models to the app name where it belongs and make sure they are imported from models/__init__.py.

You can have a look here for more details: https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/CookBookSplitModelsToFiles