I know how to build filters and Q objects in django, but I don't know how to negate the operators that the API provides, for example for the contains operator I would like something like notcontains.
e.g.
q=Q(name__notcontains="SomeString")
This would get me all objects whose name do not contain "SomeString".
Is there some syntax that I'm missing?
Thankyou.
You can use exclude() in place of filter():
Entry.objects.exclude(name__contains="SomeString")
("give me all entries EXCEPT those with names containing "SomeString")
And when dealing with Q object you can use "~" symbol before Q object to represent negation. For example the following statement means "give me all Entries with names containing "Elephant", but NOT containing "SomeString":
Entry.objects.filter(Q(name__contains="Elephant") & ~Q(name__contains="SomeString"))
In some cases you may want to use both methods:
Entry.objects.exclude(Q(name__contains="Elephant") & ~Q(name__contains="SomeString"))
("give me all entries, EXCEPT those with names containing "Elephant", but NOT containing "SomeString")
Either use exclude as Hank suggests or, for the particular contains case, use Q(name__regex=r'!(SomeString)') if you really really need to use the filter. Be warned though that regex is not database-agnostic, check what syntax your db supports first.