What is `related_name` used for in Django?

Question

What is the related_name argument useful for on ManyToManyField and ForeignKey fields? For example, given the following code, what is

Answer 1

To add to existing answer - related name is a must in case there 2 FKs in the model that point to the same table. For example in case of Bill of material

@with_author 
class BOM(models.Model): 
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200,null=True, blank=True)
    description = models.TextField(null=True, blank=True)
    tomaterial =  models.ForeignKey(Material, related_name = 'tomaterial')
    frommaterial =  models.ForeignKey(Material, related_name = 'frommaterial')
    creation_time = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True, blank=True)
    quantity = models.DecimalField(max_digits=19, decimal_places=10)

So when you will have to access this data you only can use related name

 bom = material.tomaterial.all().order_by('-creation_time')

It is not working otherwise (at least I was not able to skip the usage of related name in case of 2 FK's to the same table.)