thirdparty/google_appengine/lib/django/docs/legacy_databases.txt
author Daniel Hans <Daniel.M.Hans@gmail.com>
Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:27:24 +0200
changeset 2736 8f3935f0f4ba
parent 109 620f9b141567
permissions -rw-r--r--
Argument store added to updateEntityProperties. This argument determines if an entity should be stored in the data model after its properties are updated. It may be useful, for example, along with tasks (Task Queue API). One may want to make some modifications to an entity during execution of a task, but the developer is sure that at least one new task, which also wants to modify the entity, will be queued, so he or she can just update the entity without saving the changes to the data model, set the entity in memcache and the following task (which is to be executed very shortly) is to retrive the current entity from the memcache (without any expensive calls to the actual data model).

==================================
Integrating with a legacy database
==================================

While Django is best suited for developing new applications, it's quite
possible to integrate it into legacy databases. Django includes a couple of
utilities to automate as much of this process as possible.

This document assumes you know the Django basics, as covered in the
`official tutorial`_.

.. _official tutorial: ../tutorial1/

Give Django your database parameters
====================================

You'll need to tell Django what your database connection parameters are, and
what the name of the database is. Do that by editing these settings in your
`settings file`_:

    * `DATABASE_NAME`
    * `DATABASE_ENGINE`_
    * `DATABASE_USER`_
    * `DATABASE_PASSWORD`_
    * `DATABASE_HOST`_
    * `DATABASE_PORT`_

.. _settings file: ../settings/
.. _DATABASE_NAME: ../settings/#database-name
.. _DATABASE_ENGINE: ../settings/#database-engine
.. _DATABASE_USER: ../settings/#database-user
.. _DATABASE_PASSWORD: ../settings/#database-password
.. _DATABASE_HOST: ../settings/#database-host
.. _DATABASE_PORT: ../settings/#database-port

Auto-generate the models
========================

Django comes with a utility that can create models by introspecting an existing
database. You can view the output by running this command::

    django-admin.py inspectdb --settings=path.to.settings

Save this as a file by using standard Unix output redirection::

    django-admin.py inspectdb --settings=path.to.settings > models.py

This feature is meant as a shortcut, not as definitive model generation. See
the `django-admin.py documentation`_ for more information.

Once you've cleaned up your models, name the file ``models.py`` and put it in
the Python package that holds your app. Then add the app to your
``INSTALLED_APPS`` setting.

.. _django-admin.py documentation: ../django_admin/

Install the core Django tables
==============================

Next, run the ``manage.py syncdb`` command to install any extra needed database
records such as admin permissions and content types::

    django-admin.py init --settings=path.to.settings

See whether it worked
=====================

That's it. Try accessing your data via the Django database API, and try editing
objects via Django's admin site.