Overriding __init__() would cause code to be executed whenever the python representation of object is instantiated. I don't know rails, but a :before_created filter sounds to me like it's code to be executed when the object is created in the database. If you want to execute code when a new object is created in the database, you should override save(), checking if the object has a pk attribute or not. The code would look something like this:
def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
if not self.pk:
# This code only happens if the objects is
# not in the database yet. Otherwise it would
# have pk
super(MyModel, self).save(*args, **kwargs)
from django.db.models.signals import post_save
from django.dispatch import receiver
@receiver(post_save, sender=User)
def create_profile(sender, instance, created, **kwargs):
"""Create a matching profile whenever a user object is created."""
if created:
profile, new = UserProfile.objects.get_or_create(user=instance)
To answer the question literally, the create method in a model's manager is a standard way to create new objects in Django. To override, do something like
from django.db import models
class MyModelManager(models.Manager):
def create(self, **obj_data):
# Do some extra stuff here on the submitted data before saving...
# For example...
obj_data['my_field'] = my_computed_value(obj_data['my_other_field'])
# Now call the super method which does the actual creation
return super().create(**obj_data) # Python 3 syntax!!
class MyModel(models.model):
# An example model
my_field = models.CharField(max_length=250)
my_other_field = models.CharField(max_length=250)
objects = MyModelManager()
In this example, I'm overriding the Manager's method create method to do some extra processing before the instance is actually created.
This is old, has an accepted answer that works (Zach's), and a more idiomatic one too (Michael Bylstra's), but since it's still the first result on Google most people see, I think we need a more best-practices modern-django style answer here:
from django.db.models.signals import post_save
class MyModel(models.Model):
# ...
@classmethod
def post_create(cls, sender, instance, created, *args, **kwargs):
if not created:
return
# ...what needs to happen on create
post_save.connect(MyModel.post_create, sender=MyModel)
use a method for nice namespacing (if it makes sense) ...and I marked it as @classmethod instead of @staticmethod because most likely you'll end up needing to refer static class members in the code
Even cleaner would be if core Django would have an actual post_create signal. (Imho if you need to pass a boolean arg to change behavior of a method, that should be 2 methods.)
The preferred answer is correct but the test to tell whether the object is being created doesn't work if your model derives from UUIDModel. The pk field will already have a value.