Question

Maybe my question is little childish. A django model is typically defined like this:

class DummyModel(models.Model):
    field1 = models.CharField()
    field2 = models.CharField()

As per my understanding, field1 and field2 are defined on the class level instead of instance level. So different instances will share the same field value. How can this be possible considering a web application should be thread safe? Am I missing something in my python learning curve?

Answer 1

You are correct that normally attributes declared at the class level will be shared between instances. However, Django uses some clever code involving metaclasses to allow each instance to have different values. If you’re interested in how this is possible, Marty Alchin’s book Pro Django has a good explanation – or you could just read the code.