How to properly use the “choices” field option in Django

Question

I\'m reading the tutorial here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/ref/models/fields/#choices and i\'m trying to create a box where the user can select the month he was b

Answer 1

I would suggest to use django-model-utils instead of Django built-in solution. The main advantage of this solution is the lack of string declaration duplication. All choice items are declared exactly once. Also this is the easiest way for declaring choices using 3 values and storing database value different than usage in source code.

from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
from model_utils import Choices

class MyModel(models.Model):
   MONTH = Choices(
       ('JAN', _('January')),
       ('FEB', _('February')),
       ('MAR', _('March')),
   )
   # [..]
   month = models.CharField(
       max_length=3,
       choices=MONTH,
       default=MONTH.JAN,
   )

And with usage IntegerField instead:

from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _
from model_utils import Choices

class MyModel(models.Model):
   MONTH = Choices(
       (1, 'JAN', _('January')),
       (2, 'FEB', _('February')),
       (3, 'MAR', _('March')),
   )
   # [..]
   month = models.PositiveSmallIntegerField(
       choices=MONTH,
       default=MONTH.JAN,
   )

• This method has one small disadvantage: in any IDE (eg. PyCharm) there will be no code completion for available choices (it’s because those values aren’t standard members of Choices class).