Migrations: SQLite

when I typed in python manage.py makemigrations I get a response that says. No changes detected How do I fix this. The is no 0001_initial.py file in migrations.

So I entered the second command. ptython manage.py migrate aand it worked. Am I OK? It did not apply projects.

I am doing two parallel implementations watching the tutorial twice. In both of my attempts, the is no “projects” enter under #my apps in the settings.py file. Why? I believe I have entered everything diligently.

Hei @reblark. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Indeed, one of our videos seems to have accidentally gone missing. We’ll fix that asap.

As you discovered, the migrations (and a couple of other things) won’t work unless you register your app in the project’s settings.py file.

Check out the relevant section in the Supporting Materials. You’ll have to manually type the name of each app that you add to your Django project into the INSTALLED_APPS list in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

    'your_app_name_here',  # in this case it'll be 'projects'
]

Django’s migrations also rely on the fact that the app is correctly registered, so once you’ve added it here, this part should work as well. Give it a go and let me know whether that fixes it!

Thank you. The amazing thing is that I went back to that section and read the text. The text had this information in it but, as you have noted, the video did not. Thank you very much for responding.

Sure thing, the video was part of this course all along, just slipped through the cracks when getting the course up on the platform. It’s all set now, thanks for noticing and letting us know :)

How did you get SQLLite3 in that third frame in PyCharm?

If I click on db.sqlite3 in the first frame, “db” appears in the third frame, but not sqlite3 and none of the information that you show in the video.

OH, and I do have the professional version of PyCharm.

Aha, in going back to try to figure out where my database is, I see that I asked this question before but it didn’t get answered. So, I sent a message to Jetbrains, but it seems that you know PyCharm quite well and should understand the problem. If I can’t see the database entries, and I can’t, what do I do? I know in a later video you show the file structure and database entries in the coding section of PyCharm but, of course, I do not see those. I really need to resolve this. I am in the process of going through all the videos again. But, it seems to me that the makemigrations/migrate sequence should provide this facility (i.e. the database viewer holding sqlite3).

How do you get the screen displayed a 6:58 ?

Hei @reblark–I answered your question regarding the database viewer in another comment.

Another useful PyCharm tip: If you click <kbd>Shift</kbd> twice quickly in PyCharm, it opens up the Search Everywhere dialog. Any time you don’t know how to find something in PyCharm, you can use this dialog to simply type the name of the feature.

In this case that could be typing:

Database Viewer

And you should be able to open the window like that.

Google it! Also, googling for the task you want to achieve really helps. PyCharm has a great documentation of its features, so if you google something like:

How to open database viewer pycharm

you’ll find their docs on the topic that also show you how to open up that window.

I’m happy to help you out, but for your own best interest it is really crucial that you don’t get yourself stuck waiting but instead practice the habit of venturing out into the world-wild-web and taming those search terms 🤠. You got this! :)

Thanks for the response. I would like for you to know that I don’t sit around waiting for a response and posting a comment is not my first reaction to a problem. Also, “errors are your friends” has made a huge difference to me and I have had many rewarding moments thanks to your advice. I appreciate the tips on PyCharm and will use then. In fact, the problem I was having with PyCharm is one of the problems I solved on my own. I will get better and better at it.

I do think there is a problem in the debugging videos as I have revisited my code so many times and even when it perfectly matches your code, the results do not perfectly match.

I noticed in a very early lesson that the video presentation regarding “base_dir” was quite different from the text presentation.

It seems like this is a bit of a work in progress which I find incredibly helpful. When you make mistakes and fix them, that is a good learning moment.

Thank you, Martin.

BTW, I think this is a bit awkward in terms of communications. One a response appears in the comment section of a lesson that I have moved on from, then it while before I see it, if ever. I think your responsiveness is great, but the mechanics of it could be improved. Cheers. Ralph

Is database language compulsory to learn? And there is others database platform that offer etc sqlite, postsquel and so on. Or are there is the same language?Thanks

A very common Database Language is SQL, which comes in a couple of slightly different flavors (e.g. SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.) They are all essentially the same language, yet have some small differences in their syntax.

When you are using Django, you (theoretically) never need to write any SQL directly. You’re instead using Django’s ORM to interact with the Database, and Django’s ORM works in a (+/-) pythonic manner. That brings some advantages:

• you won’t need to know SQL to interact with a SQL Database
• you won’t have to write different flavors of SQL when interacting with different SQL backends
• you are even able to interact with non-SQL databases while still using the same syntax

Django does the heavy-lifting for you and all you need to know is how to use Django’s ORM.

However: SQL Is Very Common!

When you’re applying for a job as a web developer, it is extremely likely that your future employer will require you to know some SQL. It is a common language for interacting with databases, so learning some SQL is worth the effort and can be fun :)

Thanks @Martin after go through your course at debugging session. I start to understand about ORM.

Hello, I’m using PyCharm community so am not able to easily connect to a database. I’ve installed SQLite onto my computer, but how do I then connect that to PyCharm as you haven’t mentioned these steps. Thank you

Hi @bluebe55yPie! SQLite is a file-based database and when using Django, there’s nothing additional that you need to install. You can already interact with your SQLite database out of the box.

GUI: Viewing Content of a SQLite Database

In order to get a nice visual representation of the contents of your SQLite file, you can use the free DB Browser for SQLite. You can open the SQLite file that Django creates when you migrate for the first time with this program and get the same nice view of your database that you get with PyCharm’s Pro version.

CLI: Viewing Content of a SQLite Database

Another way to inspect the contents of your database file is through using the command-line. First, open the SQLite file using:

sqlite3 path/to/your/django/project/db.sqlite3

Now you can interact with the database through SQL commands, as well as some SQLite-specific dot-commands. E.g. you can list all available tables like so:

sqlite> .tables

To further inspect the content of a specific table, you’d have to write some raw SQL, e.g.:

sqlite> SELECT * FROM table_name;

NOTE: the sqlite> part of these commands just indicates that you’re successfully connected to your database file. You should see that prompt when typing the above commands, but you don’t need to type it out yourself.

Inspecting your SQLite database in that way can be a nice SQL-practice, if you’re into that kind of thing. Otherwise, using the GUI DB Browser for SQLite is a good option as well.

Amazing, thank you :)

After running migrations, I looked at the tables in the database and none of the blog tables are in the “main” folder as shown in the video. I know the application needs them. How do I get them in there?

First, where do those “blog” tables come from? Could I dump the migrations directory and redo the makemigrations and migrate commands?

Dumping Your Migrations

Yes, you can do that. Django will figure out what the right structure for your database is according to how you’ve set up the models. Therefore it will recreate the structure of your database again after you delete your migrations/ folder.

The idea of keeping the migration files around is essentially one of version control. You want to keep track of the changes that were applied to your database, so that:

• someone you are working with remotely can get the database in the same shape as yours
• you can roll back to older versions of your database structure

Missing Migrations

Did the other migrations get applied correctly? If it is missing for one specific app, you might have to run it for that app specifically:

python manage.py makemigrations blog
python manage.py migrate blog

It is possible that the app is not automatically included if e.g. you forgot to add it to the INSTALLED_APP in your management app’s settings.py file.

After migrations, my db viewer does not show any collations but yours shows 3 collations. Where might mine be?

There is just something wrong with whatever I did with migrations. I don’t have the blog tables, I don’t have 3 collations, and the viewer didn’t work the your did. Is there someway to erase the migrations and then try it again?

sorry. I found the collations but have not found the blog tables.

What did you get when trying to run it specifically for blog as I suggested in the comment above?

And did you verify that you have the blog app added to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py?

Whoa! this is interesting. “blog” is not an app that we install per se during the video, yes? but when I run makemigrations blog, I get the message that there is not an installed app named “blog.” I can see that in the settings file. My app is there and django.contrib.admin,auth,contenttypes,sessions,messages, staticfiles are all there. No ‘blog’ file. When I do “visualization” it all looks fine except for the blog files. Amazing. Is the “blog” file just a gift from the heavens?

BTW, your exceptional responsiveness really makes this fun.

That’s correct! Well spotted 🔎!

In this course, we are not building out the blog app. Instead we’re focusing on the projects app to get a handle on Django’s basic concepts and make some new friends :)

The tutorial the course is based on goes over building out the blog app as well, and the code I am sometimes working with when I show the finished project therefore also includes a blog app.

If you never ran python manage.py startapp blog and didn’t set up the models, nor add it to settings.py (and all the other fluff that needs to be done), then there will be no blog tables that descend upon you from the heavens. Ever. While Django might sometimes seems a little transcendent 🎩, it is after all just a bunch of code on a pile 😜

Was the blog app originally in the video then dropped?

So I ran “python manage.py startapp blog

No errors, but where do I find the blog app then? I looked in “installed_apps” in my pycharm and in your pycharm. I don’t see “blog” in your structure in the migrations video, but I have seen it in other videos. It was in the “install_apps” and there were three entries.

Keeping comments in each video has its confusing results. I can’t find my long comment about “structure,” so that I could tell you that I have worked it out. It took a little time but I found the error. Sometimes you don’t get error messages, you just get no results. I like error messages much, much better. Anyway, I have not seen a response from you. That comment I sent ended in the Danish word for ‘comprendo?’ Hope you got it.

Hi @reblark!

I initially considered building the blog app as well, but the course was too long already with just projects. We do have Jasmine’s article that walks you through building it out as well.

Creating And Registering A Django App

Check your directory structure. What Django does when running:

python manage.py startapp your_app_name

is that it creates a new Django app with all the files associated in your project’s base directory. You should have a folder called blog sitting next to your projects folder.

Running this command does not register the app, so if you want to use the new app it in your project, you have to add it manually in settings.py. The process is exactly the same one as what you went through for the projects app, so you can go back through those early videos for creating an app and registering an app.

Comments

Yes, the structure of these courses and the comments are not really set out for mentoring learners through the course, but more to add notes and… well comments to the individual lessons :)

I believe you mean this comment here?

You could post your solution under there, that would make it helpful for future learners going through the course :)

Back to the question of the “blog” app. How do you install it? where does it come from? Surely you don’t just type the word blog in the “Installed Apps” section.

In this video, when you “migrate” and then use the db viewer on projects_project, there are three records already in the database. How did they get there?

Hei @reblark. Check my comment just above. You create an app in Django as I described it in Creating And Registering A Django App. You’d need to run the command with the name blog to create the basic structure of a Django app, then build it out following the article to make it functional. Lmk in case I misunderstood your question.

I had the impression that the blog app is a real app that is already built and that can be used in the projects project. It sounds like you saying that you just name an app and register it. It’s nothing more that a holding place and could be named blag for all anybody cares.

Yes, it’s not a Django app that already exists, but one that you can build yourself following the written tutorial. As you say, it could be named anything, as it’s just a new app you are creating.

Hello Mr.Martin, I could not able to view the database view.

I did as you mentioned search tool: “Action: Database”. but it did not listed any schema or table. i did all the changes that you mentioned earlier.

Hello Muthukumar. The database tool is only available in PyCharm’s Premium version, not in the Community Edition.

Check out this free tool called DB Browser for SQLite. You can inspect your SQLite file with it via a GUI :)

@Martin Breuss, Thanks a lot, Mr.Martin. i plan to create an e-commerce website using Django/python and place it in AWS, could you suggest me some tips. i am just begineer.

That’s a bunch of work, but Django/Python is a good choice for it. :)

If you just want to get it done, then I would suggest that you look for ready-made e-commerce projects on GitHub. I am sure you can find some maintained projects that were built with Django.

If you are doing it to learn Python/Django, then look for tutorials and go step-by-step. There are great free tutorials out there, e.g. MDN’s LocalLibrary App tutorial. Build out one, two, three tutorials, then try to apply what you learned to your own app idea. It’s about training and synthesizing your knowledge.

You can do it! There’s great resources out there and in the end it’s about your grit and how much you stick with it. :)

And if you’re interested in a more ready-made curriculum that walks you through all the steps (including deployment!) with a mentor, then you can check out my new Django course that’s going to launch in just a week or so over at CodingNomads.

Hope that helps and stick with it, Django’s a great framework for web development!

Thank you very much Mr.Martin for your tutorials. Thank you very much that you mentioned about the tutorials like e.g. MDN’s LocalLibrary App tutorial and CodingNomads, i will definitely go through it and update you when i created something. thanks and cheers :D

Hi Martin, thank you so much for a great tutorial. I’ve learnt so much :) I’ve decided to change the look and feel of the portfolio using Bootstrap, HTML, CSS and JavaScript… But I’ve run into a little issue, which I was wondering you might be able to help me with?

I have a few SVG images on my portfolio page, which I’ve made interactive using JavaScript, but when I view this on IE 11 it’s all over the place and looks awful! I would like to say something like “if IE 11 then show SVG files as static images” but I’m not sure where in Django this would go…when looking online some people are saying in the HTML file, others are saying in the Manager area, or Views…so now I’m confused…and if I do need to put something in Views do I need to write a function for IE?

I have a feeling that might be the thing I need to do… but then would I need to create a separate HTML template specifically for IE11? Bit lost really…any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you! :)

Hi @bluebe55yPie and welcome to the (horrible) world of cross-browser inconsistencies… 😱

One thing upfront: from all I know this is not a Django issue to fix, but something that you will have to deal with in your HTML+CSS. Cross-browser styling lives in the realms of Front-End Web Development 😌

Here are two links that I found that you could look into if you want to go down that path. Just keep in mind that it might be a tricky task to get it all done. Internet Explorer is a known … challenge in the front-end web development world!

• Embedding SVG Cross-Browser
• Stackoverflow discussion

Hope this helps and gets you on the way!

Hi Martin, Thank you so much for your quick reply :) Good to know that it’s a Front End Web Development, so it narrows it down a bit to just HTML and CSS I need to deal with! I think I may have got myself confused as I thought it was something I need to change in Django and I made it all complicated for myself :( Hahaha, yes, I’ve noticed that Internet Explorer can be a nightmare from all the things I’ve read online, so I’m bracing myself for the challenge! Thank so much for the links and the help! It’s massively appreciated! I can now move forward in the right direction. :) :)

Hi Martin,

I am just wondering how the sample data got inserted into projects_project table. Because we have not inserted any rows or test data into it rather we just created the table using the models object.

For example, I am using MySQL and able to connect to it from Django app. Also, I inserted few records in the table manually. How can I read those records in application.

Hi @santhoshmallojwala. Yes, you won’t see any data in your tables yet, because we haven’t put anything in there yet. If you double-check around this time of the video, I mention that here we’re looking at the finished project, so that you can actually see some data in the database file :)

You’ll be adding data to your database in just a bit, in the Django Shell video that’s coming up.

Thank you Martin :)

Hi - Just in case anyone else is having the same problem:

• Problem: I have run the migrations which all seemed to work succesfully but when I open up the database in the Database Viewer (Professional Edition) there is no schema or anything - just completely empty
• Solution: When I clicked on Data Source Properties it told me I had missing drivers - once I installed them and refreshed everything appeared

Hope that helps someone.

Yipee, Going through all the comments itself is a great learning experience…(giving myself a pat on my back)

Thanks @Martin for the wonderful byte sized yet powerful course videos!

When I typed python manage.py makemigrations, I got a response that says “No changes detected.

Note: the following is what I have in the settings.py file:

"""
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    # my apps
    'projects',
]
"""

How can I fix this problem? Thanks!

@hillchristop There could be a couple of reasons. Maybe you’ve already run the migrations? Did you spell the project name correctly? Are the models defined in the right place? What’s the current state of your database? These are just a few questions, but there could be more.

The quickest fix would be to delete the migration scripts generated by Django and try again. If that doesn’t help, then something must be wrong with the code. You can always download the supporting materials to compare it with your project.

@hillchristop also from the code you shared, it seems like you commented-out the INSTALLED_APPS? I assume that this is just a formatting hiccup when posting, but if it’s also wrapped in triple-double-quotes in your code, then that would cause the migrations not to work.