Question

I’ve installed a django reusable app (Django-Userena) and would like to overwrite the given models.py file.

I have created an app named ‘accounts’ that calls from Django-Userena. In my ‘accounts’ app, I have this models.py file that has a class MyProfile that inherits from Django-Userena class UserenaBaseProfile – class MyProfile(UserenaBaseProfile)

In the UserenaBaseProfile class, there is the following code:

privacy = models.CharField(_('privacy'),
                           max_length=15,
                           choices=PRIVACY_CHOICES,
                           default=userena_settings.USERENA_DEFAULT_PRIVACY,
                           help_text = _('Designates who can view your profile.'))

I would like to extend privacy with an extra value with ‘editable=False,’ as I do not want this field to be displayed in the auto-generated form.

I tried several ways like calling privacy again in the MyProfile inherited model with the new settings but I am only made aware of Django’s “Field name “hiding” is not permitted” (https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/topics/db/models/#field-name-hiding-is-not-permitted)

My current solution is to simply include the whole UserenaBaseProfile class in my ‘accounts’ app models.py before calling class MyProfile(UserenaBaseProfile) below.

This does not look like an elegant solution to me. How do you guys go about overriding the models.py file in the reusable app?

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

In my opinion it could be done in two ways:

1. Make a fork of Django-Userena with your modified model and you use yours.

2. Make a wrapper of Django-Userena with your models.py and use your wrapper app.

For the urls.py/views.py you could just put:

#Your wrapper views:
from django-userena.views import *

#your wrapper urls:
from django-userena.urls import *

Here are your models:

#your MODIFIED model:
from django-userena.models import *
# then put you new UserenaBaseProfile

class UserenaBaseProfile(models.Model):
    #copy the model fields
    ...
    privacy = models.CharField(_('privacy'),
                       max_length=15,
                       choices=PRIVACY_CHOICES,
                       default=userena_settings.USERENA_DEFAULT_PRIVACY,
                       help_text = _('Designates who can view your profile.'))

Then you could use your custom app in your project.

If you want to customise templates, create a templates directory in your project and put there your modified template files keeping their original names, so the django template-loader could find yours first (it depends how template-loaders have been configured in your settings.py)