Question

I need to ask the user for two security questions and their corresponding answers. The security questions will be provided by me, so it will be some kind of <select>. I created a model to store the user profile named UserProfile. It looks like:

class UserProfile(models.Model):
    phone1 = models.CharField(help_text='Primary phone number')
    phone2 = models.CharField(help_text='Secondary phone number', blank=True)
    ...

I could do something like:

SECURITY_QUESTIONS_CHOICES = (
    ('PN', 'What is your telephone number?'),
    ('BF', 'What is the full name of your best friend?'),
    ...
    )

and add the following two fields to my model:

question1 = models.CharField(choices=SECURITY_QUESTIONS_CHOICES)
question2 = models.CharField(choices=SECURITY_QUESTIONS_CHOICES)

but I want to be able to modify the list of security questions, so I want it to be a model too.

My question is:

What is the best way of having two fields that point to the same model?

• Having only one field (eg. questions) which is a ManyToMany relationship to SecurityQuestion, and restricting the number to 2 in the registration form?
• Having two fields (question1 and question2) where each one is a ForeignKey to SecurityQuestion?

Answer 1

I would prefer create a separate model for all security questions. It gives you flexibility.

class SecurityQuestions(models.Model):
    class Meta:
        db_table = 'security_questions'
    id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
    question = models.CharField(max_length = 250, null=False)

class UserProfile(models.Model):
    ----
    ----
    user_questions = models.ManyToManyField(SecurityQuestions, through='SecurityQuestionsInter')


class SecurityQuestionsInter(models.Model):
    class Meta:
        db_table = 'security_questions_inter'

    profile = models.ForeignKey(Profile)
    security_questions = models.ForeignKey(SecurityQuestions)
    answer = models.CharField(max_length = 250, null=False)