How do I use a dictionary to update fields in Django models?

Question

Suppose I have a model like this:

class Book(models.Model):
    num_pages = ...
    author = ...
    date = ...

Can I create a dictionary,

Answer 1

Use ** for creating a new model. Loop through the dictionary and use setattr() in order to update an existing model.

From Tom Christie's Django Rest Framework

https://github.com/tomchristie/django-rest-framework/blob/master/rest_framework/serializers.py

for attr, value in validated_data.items():
    setattr(instance, attr, value)
instance.save()