Common Issues

Bulk Creating and Queryset Updating

django-simple-history functions by saving history using a post_save signal every time that an object with history is saved. However, for certain bulk operations, such as bulk_create and queryset updates, signals are not sent, and the history is not saved automatically. However, django-simple-history provides utility functions to work around this.

Bulk Creating a Model with History

As of django-simple-history 2.2.0, we can use the utility function bulk_create_with_history in order to bulk create objects while saving their history:

>>> from simple_history.utils import bulk_create_with_history
>>> from simple_history.tests.models import Poll
>>> from django.utils.timezone import now
>>>
>>> data = [Poll(id=x, question='Question ' + str(x), pub_date=now()) for x in range(1000)]
>>> objs = bulk_create_with_history(data, Poll, batch_size=500)
>>> Poll.objects.count()
1000
>>> Poll.history.count()
1000

If you want to specify a change reason for each record in the bulk create, you can add changeReason on each instance:

>>> for poll in data:
        poll.changeReason = 'reason'
>>> objs = bulk_create_with_history(data, Poll, batch_size=500)
>>> Poll.history.get(id=data[0].id).history_change_reason
'reason'

QuerySet Updates with History

Unlike with bulk_create, queryset updates perform an SQL update query on the queryset, and never return the actual updated objects (which would be necessary for the inserts into the historical table). Thus, we tell you that queryset updates will not save history (since no post_save signal is sent). As the Django documentation says:

If you want to update a bunch of records for a model that has a custom
``save()`` method, loop over them and call ``save()``, like this:

for e in Entry.objects.filter(pub_date__year=2010):
    e.comments_on = False
    e.save()

Tracking Custom Users

• fields.E300:

  ERRORS:
  custom_user.HistoricalCustomUser.history_user: (fields.E300) Field defines a relation with model 'custom_user.CustomUser', which is either not installed, or is abstract.
  

  Use register() to track changes to the custom user model instead of setting HistoricalRecords on the model directly. See Save without a historical record.

  The reason for this, is that unfortunately HistoricalRecords cannot be set directly on a swapped user model because of the user foreign key to track the user making changes.

Using django-webtest with Middleware

When using django-webtest to test your Django project with the django-simple-history middleware, you may run into an error similar to the following:

django.db.utils.IntegrityError: (1452, 'Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (`test_env`.`core_historicaladdress`, CONSTRAINT `core_historicaladdress_history_user_id_0f2bed02_fk_user_user_id` FOREIGN KEY (`history_user_id`) REFERENCES `user_user` (`id`))')

This error occurs because django-webtest sets DEBUG_PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS to true preventing the middleware from cleaning up the request. To solve this issue, add the following code to any clean_environment or tearDown method that you use:

from simple_history.middleware import HistoricalRecords
if hasattr(HistoricalRecords.thread, 'request'):
    del HistoricalRecords.thread.request

Using F() expressions

F() expressions, as described here, do not work on models that have history. Simple history inserts a new record in the historical table for any model being updated. However, F() expressions are only functional on updates. Thus, when an F() expression is used on a model with a history table, the historical model tries to insert using the F() expression, and raises a ValueError.