Django DateField default options

Question

I have a model which has a date time field:

date = models.DateField(_(\"Date\"), default=datetime.now())

Answer 1

This is why you should always import the base datetime module: import datetime, rather than the datetime class within that module: from datetime import datetime.

The other mistake you have made is to actually call the function in the default, with the (). This means that all models will get the date at the time the class is first defined - so if your server stays up for days or weeks without restarting Apache, all elements will get same the initial date.

So the field should be:

import datetime
date = models.DateField(_("Date"), default=datetime.date.today)

Answer 2

This should do the trick:

models.DateTimeField(_("Date"), auto_now_add = True)

Answer 3

You could also use lambda. Useful if you're using django.utils.timezone.now

date = models.DateField(_("Date"), default=lambda: now().date())

Answer 4

date = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.now, blank=True)

Answer 5

I think a better way to solve this would be to use the datetime callable:

from datetime import datetime

date = models.DateField(default=datetime.now)

Note that no parenthesis were used. If you used parenthesis you would invoke the now() function just once (when the model is created). Instead, you pass the callable as an argument, thus being invoked everytime an instance of the model is created.

Credit to Django Musings. I've used it and works fine.

Answer 6

Your mistake is using the datetime module instead of the date module. You meant to do this:

from datetime import date
date = models.DateField(_("Date"), default=date.today)

If you only want to capture the current date the proper way to handle this is to use the auto_now_add parameter:

date = models.DateField(_("Date"), auto_now_add=True)

However, the modelfield docs clearly state that auto_now_add and auto_now will always use the current date and are not a default value that you can override.