django syncdb does not appear to run my custom hook

Question

I have some existing SQL statements that I'd like to use as a custom hook after the CREATE TABLE command, in [myapp]/sql/[model-name].sql.

My app is in INSTALLED_APPS. I see listed if I run ./manage.py sql.

My custom hook is found; I see the SQL statements output if I run any of the following:

./manage.py sqlall <myapp> ./manage.py sqlcustom <myapp> ./manage.py sql <myapp>

I'm using postgres 9.x on my mac.

If I psql to that same database (with no user) and copy them from the .sql file and paste them into the psql command input, they all work... so I believe they're valid SQL understood by postgres. These are all pretty simple INSERT statements (fixtures addressed below).

However, if I run ./manage.py syncdb those statements are either not run, or they are ignored or silent errors happen; all I know is that the new rows do not appear in the database. I am tailing the postgres log file and nothing is logged when I run syncdb, so I don't know if it's not finding my .sql file, or parsing it and finding some error before it gets to the database.

I have created a .json file, for fixtures, with the equivalent of those statements, and ./manage.py loaddata <path-to-json-file> works correctly: my site now shows those values in the database. This makes me believe that my settings file is correct and the database I'm writing to inside postgres is set correctly, and I have write permissions when I run ./manage.py.

I saw in some other post that the django documentation is wrong and I should put the custom hook in the 'models' directory, but I don't know if that's right; if sqlall and sqlcustom find my hook, shouldn't syncdb find it? Also I don't (yet) have a models directory and may not need it.

For various reasons I'd rather not use JSON format, but if I have to I will... however I've invested so much time in the .sql format I really want to know what's going on (and I've seen enough existing related questions that this might help others).

Answer 1

I believe I found it, although it's based on behaviors not any real research. I simply changed 'tile' to 'tilexx' everywhere and it worked. This django-project post indicates that if there is some sort of python class name conflict the custom SQL won't be executed... and 'tile' is a pretty common thing.

So the answer is to change the name of my class to something a bit more unique.

Answer 2

I've been searching for an answer to a similar problem, trying to initialize an sqlite database with data I dumped from a Flask application I'm porting to Django. Like the OP, all of the following did the right thing:

./manage.py sqlall <myapp> ./manage.py sqlcustom <myapp> ./manage.py sql <myapp>

However, the insert statements in myapp/sql/myapp.sql were not being run. A careful reading of the documentation revealed this clue:

Django provides a hook for passing the database arbitrary SQL that’s executed just after the CREATE TABLE statements when you run syncdb.

(emphasis added)

The issue is that I had already registered my models and run syncdb, so the table in question already existed in the database, although it held no data yet. I deduce that because of this, the CREATE TABLE statement was not being run on subsequent executions of syncdb, and therefore, my custom sql could not be run after that statement. The solution was to DROP table table_name and then run syncdb again, at which point my custom sql was run.