Django Bi-directional ManyToMany - How to prevent table creation on second model?

Question

I have two models, each has a shared ManyToMany, using the db_table field. But how do I prevent syncdb from attempting to create the shared table, for the second model?

Answer 1

You don't need to put a ManyToManyField on both sides of the relation. Django will do that for you.

You probably want something more like this:

class Model1(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=128)
    ...

class Model2(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=128)
    othermodels = models.ManyToManyField(Model1, through='Model1Model2')
    ...        

class Membership(models.Model):
    class Meta:
        db_table = 'model1_model2'
    model1 = models.ForeignKey(Model1)        
    model2 = models.ForeignKey(Model2)

When you're working with your models, an instance of Model1 will have a othermodels_set field which is automatically added by django. Instances of Model2 will have othermodels.