Question

How would I do:

FinancialStatements.objects.get(statement_id=statement_id) 
    or SalesStatements.objects.get(statement_id=statement_id)

The result will always yield one result.

I ended up using the try/except route here:

    try:
        statement_object = FinancialStatements.objects.get(statement_id=statement_id)
    except FinancialStatements.DoesNotExist:
        statement_object = SalesStatements.objects.get(statement_id=statement_id)

Answer 1

Why not simply do:

result = (FinancialStatements.objects.filter(statement_id=statement_id) or
          SalesStatements.objects.filter(statement_id=statement_id))

This should work, because filter returns a list – and an empty list if no entries match. An empty list evaluates to false in python’s boolean logic, e.g. try running:

print [] or "hello"

(Just as a check, compare print ["Hi"] or "hello")

So, if the first query returns empty, the second will then be run. However, if the first matches anything, this will be result and the second query will be ignored.

Addendum: result will then be of a list type – you’ll need to extract the (one and only) element with result[0].