Question

I extended the User model in Django by using Profiles. As you know, creating a new user doesn’t create a new profile linked to that user, so we need to add an auxiliary method, something like this:

class UserProfile(models.Model):
    user = models.OneToOneField(User)
    field_to_be_updated = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

User.profile = property(lambda u: UserProfile.objects.get_or_create(user=u))

That works great, but I’d like to be able to call a method, say, update_a_field within the UserProfile class in such a way I could do User.objects.all[0].profile.update_a_field() or something to that effect.

I have tried to create a Manager to UserProfile class to no avail. It just doesn’t recognize the methods I attach to the class. It seems UserProfile is not a regular model in the sense it ccan’t be accesed by UserProfile.objects…

So, how can I add methods to update a UserProfile instance? Should I add a method to the User model and then access UserProfile in that way?.

Answer 1

I’m not sure exactly why but my experience is:

DOES NOT WORK

user.profile.field = "value"
user.profile.save()

DOES WORK

profile = user.profile
profile.field = "value"
profile.save()