Update only specific fields in a models.Model

Question

I have a model

class Survey(models.Model):
    created_by = models.ForeignKey(User)
    question = models.CharField(max_length=150)
    active = models.NullBooleanField()
    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.question

and now I want to update only the active field. So I do this:

survey = get_object_or_404(Survey, created_by=request.user, pk=question_id)
survey.active = True
survey.save(["active"]) 

Now I get an error IntegrityError: PRIMARY KEY must be unique.

Am I right with this method to update?

Answer 1

To update a subset of fields, you can use update_fields:

survey.save(update_fields=["active"]) 

The update_fields argument was added in Django 1.5. In earlier versions, you could use the update() method instead:

Survey.objects.filter(pk=survey.pk).update(active=True)

Answer 2

Usually, the correct way of updating certain fields in one or more model instances is to use the update() method on the respective queryset. Then you do something like this:

affected_surveys = Survey.objects.filter(
    # restrict your queryset by whatever fits you
    # ...
    ).update(active=True)

This way, you don't need to call save() on your model anymore because it gets saved automatically. Also, the update() method returns the number of survey instances that were affected by your update.