Back-end Validation for Django Model Field Choices

In Django, you can provide a list of values that a field can have when creating a model. This post shows a way to validate the values passed which creating a new instance or saving an existing one.

For example, here's a minimalistic model for storing musicians:

from django.db import models


class Artist(models.Model):

    TYPE_CHOICES = (
        ('Person', 'Person'),
        ('Group', 'Group'),
        ('Other', 'Other'),)

    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    type = models.CharField(max_length=20, choices=TYPE_CHOICES)

Using this code in the Admin interface, as well as in Forms, will make the "Type" field be represented as a drop-down box. Therefore, if all input comes from Admin and Forms, the value of "Type" is expected to be one of those defined in the TYPE_CHOICES tuple. There are 2 things worth noting:

  1. Using choices is a presentation convenience. There is no restriction of the value that can be sent to the database, even coming from the front-end. For example, if you use the browser's inspect feature, you can edit the drop-down list, change one of the values and submit it. The back-end view will then happily consume it and save it to the database.

  2. There is no validation at any stage of the input lifecycle. You may have a specified list of values in the Admin or Forms front-end, but your application may accept input from other sources as well, such as management commands, or bulk imports from fixtures. In none of those cases will a value that is not in the TYPE_CHOICES structure be rejected.

Validation

So let's find a way to fix this by adding some validation in the back-end.

Django has this amazing feature called signals. They allow you to attach extra functionality to some actions, by emitting a signal from that action. For example, in this case we will use the pre_save signal, which gets executed just before a model instance is saved to the database.

Here's the example model, with the signal connected to it:

from django.db import models


class Artist(models.Model):

    TYPE_CHOICES = (
        ('Person', 'Person'),
        ('Group', 'Group'),
        ('Other', 'Other'),)

    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    type = models.CharField(max_length=20, choices=TYPE_CHOICES)


models.signals.pre_save.connect(validate_artist_name_choice, sender=Artist)

That last line will call a function named validate_artist_name_choice just before an Artist is saved in the database. Let's write that function:

def validate_artist_name_choice(sender, instance, **kwargs):
    valid_types = [t[0] for t in sender.TYPE_CHOICES]
    if instance.type not in valid_types:
        from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError
        raise ValidationError(
            'Artist Type "{}" is not one of the permitted values: {}'.format(
                instance.type,
               ', '.join(valid_types)))

This function can be anywhere in your code, as long as you can import it in the model. Personally, if a pre_save function is specific to one model, I like to put it in the same module as the model itself, but that's just my preference.

So let's try to create a couple of Artists and see what happens. In this example, my App is called "v".

>>> from v.models import Artist
>>> 
>>> some_artist = Artist(name='Some Artist', type='Person')
>>> some_artist.save()
>>> 
>>> some_other_artist = Artist(name='Some Other Artist', type='Alien Lifeform')
>>> some_other_artist.save()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.5/code.py", line 91, in runcode
    exec(code, self.locals)
  File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/vs/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 796, in save
    force_update=force_update, update_fields=update_fields)
  File "/home/vs/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 820, in save_base
    update_fields=update_fields)
  File "/home/vs/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/django/dispatch/dispatcher.py", line 191, in send
    response = receiver(signal=self, sender=sender, **named)
  File "/home/vs/Tests/validator/v/models.py", line 14, in validate_artist_name_choice
    ', '.join(valid_types)))
django.core.exceptions.ValidationError: ['Artist Type "Alien Lifeform" is not one of the permitted values: Person, Group, Other']

Brilliant! We now have a expressive exception that we can catch in our views or scripts or whatever else we want to use to create model instances. This exception is thrown either when we call the .save() method of a model instance, or when we use the .create() method of a model class. Using the example model, we would get the same exception if we ran:

Artist.objects.create(name='Some Other Artist', type='Alien Lifeform')

Or even:

Artist.objects.get_or_create(name='Some Other Artist', type='Alien Lifeform')

Test It!

Here's a test that triggers the exception:

from django.test import TestCase
from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError
from .models import Artist


class TestArtist(TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.test_artist = Artist(name='Some Artist', type='Some Type')

    def test_artist_type_choice(self):
        with self.assertRaises(ValidationError):
            self.test_artist.save()

Conclusion

Using Django's pre_save functionality, you can validate your application's input in the back-end, and avoid any surprises. Go forth and validate!

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