Django: “Soft” ForeignField without database integrity checks

Question

I have a Django project that has multiple django \"apps\". One of them has models to represent data coming from an external source (I do not control this data).

I want m

Answer 1

You could try using an unmanaged model:

from django.db import models


class ReferencedModel(models.Model):
    pass


class ManagedModel(models.Model):
    my_fake_fk = models.IntegerField(
        db_column='referenced_model_id'
    )


class UnmanagedModel(models.Model):
    my_fake_fk = models.ForeignKey(
        ReferencedModel, 
        db_column='referenced_model_id'
    )

    class Meta:
        managed = False
        db_table = ManagedModel._meta.db_table

Specifying managed=False in a Model Meta class will not create a db table for it. However, it will behave exactly like other models.