Question

I’m trying to use a string as a parameter in a function. Is something like this possible?

from django.contrib.auth.models import User

param_var = 'contains'
User.objects.filter(first_name__{param_var}='John')

# ideally, this should equate to:
User.objects.filter(first_name__contains='John')

Answer 1

param_var = 'contains'
User.objects.filter(**{'first_name__%s'%param_var: 'John'})

Though I really wonder about the wisdom of doing that… I think you may be re-inventing sql injection…

I suspect there’s a better way. You should probably explain more of what you are trying to accomplish.