Question

I have multiple objects saved in my database but I would only like to show items in my queryset that are unique and if they actually have an item saved.

models.py

class Everything(models.Model):
    profile = models.ForeignKey(User)
    playlist = models.CharField('Playlist', max_length = 2000, null=True, blank=True)
    platform = models.CharField('Platform', max_length = 2000, null=True, blank=True)
    video = models.CharField('VideoID', max_length = 2000, null=True, blank=True)
    def __unicode__(self):
        return u'%s %s %s %s' % (self.profile, self.playlist, self.platform, self.video)

views.py

playlist2 = Everything.objects.filter(profile=request.user)

template

<select name ="playlist2">
{% for item in playlist2 %}
  <option value="{{item.playlist}}">{{item.playlist}}</option>
{% endfor %}
</select>

There doesn’t have to be a playlist because null=True and blank=True. Some of the items in playlist might also be duplicated. How do I show only the distinct items that have values in them?

Answer 1

You can use exclude and distinct queryset functions (docs).

However in your case it is not that simple since your CharField definitions allow both NULL (null=True) and empty string (blank=True) values. So that means you have to test for two conditions and for that you have to use Q (docs) objects:

 everything = Everything.objects.exclude(Q(playlist=None) | Q(playlist='')).distinct()

That is exactly why Django docs do not recommend to use null=True for string model fields (docs). Here is excerpt:

Avoid using null on string-based fields such as CharField and
TextField unless you have an excellent reason. If a string-based field
has null=True, that means it has two possible values for “no data”:
NULL, and the empty string. In most cases, it’s redundant to have two
possible values for “no data;” Django convention is to use the empty
string, not NULL.

If you follow this conversion, then your filter lookup becomes much simpler:

 everything = Everything.objects.exclude(playlist=None).distinct()