how to have Accent-insensitive filter in django with postgres?

Question

Hi I find that on postgres database, we can\'t configure default accent sensivity (on old mail exchanges).

Is there a way to have a _icontains also insensitive to specia

Answer 1

I managed to install unaccent from postgresql contrib, but this answer that patches django didn't work. load_backend on django.db.utils enforces that the backend name starts with django.db.backends.

The solution that worked for me was inserting this code in one of my modules:

from django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2.base import DatabaseOperations, DatabaseWrapper

def lookup_cast(self, lookup_type, internal_type=None):
    if lookup_type in('icontains', 'istartswith'):
        return "UPPER(unaccent(%s::text))"
    else:
        return super(DatabaseOperations, self).lookup_cast(lookup_type, internal_type)

def patch_unaccent():
    DatabaseOperations.lookup_cast = lookup_cast
    DatabaseWrapper.operators['icontains'] = 'LIKE UPPER(unaccent(%s))'
    DatabaseWrapper.operators['istartswith'] = 'LIKE UPPER(unaccent(%s))'
    print 'Unaccent patch'

patch_unaccent()

Now unaccent searches are working fine, even inside django admin! Thanks for your answer above!