How to update multiple fields of a django model instance?

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I'm wondering, what is a standard way of updating multiple fields of an instance of a model in django? ... If I have a model with some fields,

Class foomodel(models.Model):
    field1 = models.CharField(max_length=10)
    field2 = models.CharField(max_length=10)
    field3 = models.CharField(max_length=10)
    ...

... and I instantiate it with one field given, and then in a separate step I want to provide the rest of the fields, how do I do that by just passing a dictionary or key value params? Possible?

In other words, say I have a dictionary with some data in it that has everything I want to write into an instance of that model. The model instance has been instantiated in a separate step and let's say it hasn't been persisted yet. I can say foo_instance.field1 = my_data_dict['field1'] for each field, but something tells me there should be a way of calling a method on the model instance where I just pass all of the field-value pairs at once and it updates them. Something like foo_instance.update(my_data_dict). I don't see any built-in methods like this, am I missing it or how is this efficiently done?

I have a feeling this is an obvious, RTM kind of question but I just haven't seen it in the docs.

5 Answers

It seems like such a natural thing you'd want to do but like you I've not found it in the docs either. The docs do say you should sub-class save() on the model. And that's what I do.

def save(self, **kwargs):
    mfields = iter(self._meta.fields)
    mods = [(f.attname, kwargs[f.attname]) for f in mfields if f.attname in kwargs]
    for fname, fval in mods: setattr(self, fname, fval)
    super(MyModel, self).save()
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