Question

Assume:

class ItemToBill(models.Model):
    date_to_bill = fields.DateField()
    description = fields.charfield()
    customerToBill = fields.ForeignKey(Customer)

I want to find all items that should be billed before today, and then group them by customer so I can create a single invoice for each customer that needs it.

for unique_customer in all_unique_customers_with_items_to_bill:
    createInvoice(unique_customer,  their_items_to_bill)

I could probably do something where I query the items (ordering by the customers) and then identifying when I’ve entered a new customer’s set of items. This would look like:

items = ItemToBill.objects.filter(date_to_bill=BEFORE_TODAY).order_by(customer)
prevCustomer = items[0].customer
customer_items = []
for item in items:
    if prevCustomer != item.customer:
        createInvoice(prevCustomer, customer_items)
        customer_items = []
        prevCustomer = item.customer
    customer_items.append(item)
createInvioce(prevCustomer, customer_items) #Handle the last customer

but there’s got to be a more clever solution. Suggestions?

Answer 1

You need a list of items by customer, which sounds like a simple loop.

items_by_customer = {}

for item in ItemToBill.objects.filter(...date_query...):
    items_by_customer.setdefault(item.customerToBill, []).append(item)

for customer, items in items_by_customer.items():
    print customer, items # items grouped by customer.
    # generate_invoice(customer, items)