Django not creating db tables for models (neither with syncdb nor South)

Question

I have a Django project on a Centos VPS.

I created some models and debugged them so they validate and give no errors. I have them in a "models" folder in my myapp and have added each model to the init file in this directory, for example:

from category import Category

I added the app to settings.py INSTALLED_APPS and ran:

Python manage.py syncdb

It appeared to work fine and added all tables apart from the ones for my app.

I then installed South and added that to INSTALLED_APPS and, tried syncdb again and ran:

Python manage.py schemamigration myapp --initial

It generated the file correctly but nothing was in it (none of the tables my models).

An example file in "models" folder (usertype.py)

from django.db import models

class UserType(models.Model):
    usertype_id = models.PositiveIntegerField(primary_key=True)
    description = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    is_admin = models.BooleanField()
    is_moderator = models.BooleanField()

class Meta:
    app_label = 'myapp'

Any ideas what could be going wrong here and why I can't get anything to detect my models?

Answer 1

you're misunderstanding the process of working with south. South isn't just another application, it's a managing tool. Your app needs to be a South application from the begining or converted to one. That being said, the process is like so:

1. Add South to INSTALLED_APPS
2. run syncdb for the first time
3. Add your app to INSTALLED_APPS*

4. run the south initialization command:

   python manage.py schemamigration myapp --initial
   

5. migrate:

   python manage.py migrate
   

If you want to convert a project:

1. Run syncdb after adding south

2. run:

   manage.py convert_to_south myapp

And use south from now on to manage your migrations.

*p.s. - you can add both south and your own app at the same time, if you keep in mind to put south before your own apps. That's because django reads INSTALLED_APPS in order - it runs syncdb on all apps, but after installing south it won't install the rest and instead tell you to use the south commands to handle those

edit

I misled you. Since you put so much emphasis on the south thing I didn't realize the problem was you were trying to use models as a directory module instead of a normal file. This is a recognized problem in django, and the workaround is actually exactly as you though in the first place:

say this is your structure:

project/
       myapp/
            models/
                  __init__.py
                  bar.py

you need bar.py to look like this:

from django.db import models

class Foo(models.Model):
    # fields...

    class Meta:
        app_label = 'myapp' #you need this!

and __init__.py needs to look like this:

from bar import Foo

Make sure it looks like this and it will work.

UPDATE 18/08/2014

The ticket has changed to wontfix, because apparently the bigger issue with the app_label has been fixed. Huzza!

Answer 2

Run the following commands

python manage.py makemigrations yourappname

python manage.py migrate

Note it works on django 1.7 version for me.