Temporarily disable auto_now / auto_now_add

Question

I have a model like this:

class FooBar(models.Model):
    createtime = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    lastupdatetime = models.DateTimeField(auto         


        

Answer 1

I went the context manager way for reusability.

@contextlib.contextmanager
def suppress_autotime(model, fields):
    _original_values = {}
    for field in model._meta.local_fields:
        if field.name in fields:
            _original_values[field.name] = {
                'auto_now': field.auto_now,
                'auto_now_add': field.auto_now_add,
            }
            field.auto_now = False
            field.auto_now_add = False
    try:
        yield
    finally:
        for field in model._meta.local_fields:
            if field.name in fields:
                field.auto_now = _original_values[field.name]['auto_now']
                field.auto_now_add = _original_values[field.name]['auto_now_add']

Use like so:

with suppress_autotime(my_object, ['updated']):
    my_object.some_field = some_value
    my_object.save()

Boom.