Specifying a mySQL ENUM in a Django model

Question

How do I go about specifying and using an ENUM in a Django model?

Answer 1

From the Django documentation:

MAYBECHOICE = (
    ('y', 'Yes'),
    ('n', 'No'),
    ('u', 'Unknown'),
)

And you define a charfield in your model :

married = models.CharField(max_length=1, choices=MAYBECHOICE)

You can do the same with integer fields if you don't like to have letters in your db.

In that case, rewrite your choices:

MAYBECHOICE = (
    (0, 'Yes'),
    (1, 'No'),
    (2, 'Unknown'),
)

Answer 2

A the top of your models.py file, add this line after you do your imports:

    enum = lambda *l: [(s,_(s)) for s in l]

Answer 3

There're currently two github projects based on adding these, though I've not looked into exactly how they're implemented:

1. Django-EnumField:
   Provides an enumeration Django model field (using IntegerField) with reusable enums and transition validation.
2. Django-EnumFields:
   This package lets you use real Python (PEP435-style) enums with Django.

I don't think either use DB enum types, but they are in the works for first one.