django Signals not working as expected

Question

I am trying to create a project for creating feeds/activity feeds of a user with the help of a blog.

These are the models -

class StreamItem(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType)
    object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.now)
    content_object = generic.GenericForeignKey('content_type', 'object_id')

    @property 
    def content_class(self):
        return self.content_type.model


class Blog(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    title = models.CharField(max_length=300)
    body = models.TextField()
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.now)


class Photo(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    image = models.ImageField(upload_to=get_upload_file_name)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.now)

And this is the signals.py:

__init__.py
from django.db.models import signals
from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
from django.dispatch import dispatcher
from blogs.models import Blog
from picture.models import Photo
from models import StreamItem

def create_stream_item(sender, instance, signal, *args, **kwargs):

    # Check to see if the object was just created for the first time

    if 'created' in kwargs:
        if kwargs['created']:
            create = True

            # Get the instance's content type

            ctype = ContentType.object.get_for_model(instance)

            if create:
                si = StreamItem.objects.get_or_create(user=instance.user, content_type=ctype, object_id=instance.id, pub_date = instance.pub_date)

 # Send a signal on post_save for each of these models

for modelname in [Blog, Photo]:
    dispatcher.connect(create_stream_item, signal=signals.post_save, sender=modelname)

When I create a blog or upload a photo, the signal does not work. And I am not getting any error too. But I can manually add items to the StreamItem app using the admin, and the StreamItem does work as I want it to be. I think there's problem with the signals.py. Please help me out. Would be much appreciate. Thank you.

Answer 1

You have to make sure that the signals are loaded soon after django is started. The one possible way to ensure it is to import the module into __init__.py

# __init__.py
# add the below line and run the project again
import signals

Answer 2

Unless you've omitted code, the new si item your signal handler creates is missing the required field user. You probably need to add that to your get_or_create call.