Storing list of objects in Django model

Question

Is there a way in Django to have multiple objects stored and manageable (in Django admin) inside another object?

Example, I have two models: Items and RMA. The RMA may have multiple Items inside of it. Each Item is unique in the sense that it is an inventoried part, so I can't just reference the same item multiple times with foreignKey (though maybe I'm misunderstanding its use/implementation).

So for now, I have an Item model:

class Item(models.Model):
    serial_number = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    part_number = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    location = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

And an RMA model:

class RMA(models.Model):
    number = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
    items = ?????

Ultimately I'd like to be able to maintain use of the Django admin functionality to add/remove items from an RMA if necessary, so I've been staying away from serializing a list and then deserializing on display. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You're modeling a has-many relationship.

This would be modeled with a Foreign Key on Item to RMA:

class Item(models.Model):
    serial_number = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    part_number = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    location = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    rma = models.ForeignKey(RMA)
    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

To make it accessible in the admin of RMA you need djangos InlineAdmin functionality.

You can find examples in the django tutorial part2.