Question

What is the accepted way of checking a model’s existence in a Django app?

I’ve seen this method used:

def profile_exists(user):
        try:
                UserProfile.objects.get(user = user)
                return True
        except:
                return False

Is there a built-in function suited for this purpose?

Answer 1

Bare excepts should not be used. Instead the model’s DoesNotExist inner exception or django.core.exceptions.ObjectDoesNotExist should be caught.

Beyond that, either this or using len(SomeModel.objects.filter(...)) are acceptable.