Making a multi-table inheritance design generic in Django

Question

First of all, some links to pages I\'ve used for reference: A SO question, and the Django docs on generic relations and multi-table inheritance.

So far, I have a mul

Answer 1

I have done something similar to method 2 in one of my projects:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType

class BaseModel(models.Model):
    type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType,editable=False)
    # other base fields here

    def save(self,force_insert=False,force_update=False):
        if self.type_id is None:
            self.type = ContentType.objects.get_for_model(self.__class__)
        super(BaseModel,self).save(force_insert,force_update)

    def get_instance(self):
        return self.type.get_object_for_this_type(id=self.id)

Answer 2

It would be better to compose the models of an Item model and an ItemType model. Subclassing models sounds nice and is useful in a few edge cases, but generally, it is safest and most efficient to stick to tactics that work with your database, rather than against it.