As part of my efforts to learn python and django I decided to create a little module that can export model fields to YAML and then import it again to restore your DB. It works for your own models and users, groups, etc. Have not tested it with user permissions and group membership, but it might work. Sharing this code on GitHub so that peers can review it and also to keep it safe.
Key features of Python/Django I had to learn:
- Django model fields (spent some time on docs and even django code on git to figure out which way was up)
- Django model options and
_metaAPI - Python
tablib
Before I decided to create this module I looked at django-import-export (https://django-import-export.readthedocs.io). It was super easy to export models to YAML, but I just could not figure out the importing. It did however learn quite a lot about django's models, fields and _meta API while trying to debug the importing.
The import and export features are very simple and might not work for all models yet. The tablib module supports many different formats, not just YAML. Maybe later I will make the file format configurable.
The module only has to user functions: one for importing and one for exporting. The export function creates a new file for each model type (for example, User.yaml in the code below).
# This code will export all users to 'User.yaml' and then import it again.
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from import_export import model_yaml
path = './'
model_yaml.exportYaml(User, path)
...
model_yaml.importYaml(User, path)