In Django filter statement what's the difference between __exact and equal sign (=)?

Question

In Django filter statement what\'s the difference if I write:

.filter(name__exact=\'Alex\')

and

.filter(name=\'Alex\')
         


        

Answer 1

You can look at the SQL that Django will execute by converting the queryset's query property to a string:

>>> from django.contrib.auth.models import User
>>> str(User.objects.filter(username = 'name').query)
'SELECT ... WHERE `auth_user`.`username` = name '
>>> str(User.objects.filter(username__exact = 'name').query)
'SELECT ... WHERE `auth_user`.`username` = name '

So __exact makes no difference here.