makemigrations and migrate commands in Django - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using makemigrations and migrate Commands in Django

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Django app to manage a library's book collection. You need to create the database tables for your app models and apply changes to the database using Django's migration system.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to create migration files with makemigrations and apply them to the database with migrate commands in Django.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Django model for books

Generate migration files using makemigrations

Apply migrations to the database using migrate

Verify the migration commands are correctly used

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Django developers use migrations to safely and easily update database schemas as their app models change over time.

💼 Career

Understanding migrations is essential for backend developers working with Django to manage database changes without data loss.

1

Create a Django model for books

In your Django app's models.py file, create a model class called Book with these exact fields: title as a CharField with max length 100, and author as a CharField with max length 50.

Django

# Define the Book model with title and author fields
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use models.CharField for text fields and set max_length exactly as specified.

2

Create migration files with makemigrations

Run the Django management command python manage.py makemigrations in your terminal to create migration files for the Book model you just defined.

Django

from django.db import models

class Book(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    author = models.CharField(max_length=50)

# Run the command: python manage.py makemigrations
# Your code here

Need a hint?

This command creates migration files that describe the changes in your models.

3

Apply migrations to the database with migrate

Run the Django management command python manage.py migrate in your terminal to apply the migration files and create the database tables for the Book model.

Django

from django.db import models

class Book(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    author = models.CharField(max_length=50)

# Command to run:
# python manage.py makemigrations

# Now run the command: python manage.py migrate
# Your code here

Need a hint?

This command applies the migrations and creates the tables in your database.

4

Verify migration commands usage

Add comments in your code showing the exact two commands you used: python manage.py makemigrations and python manage.py migrate to complete the migration process.

Django

from django.db import models

class Book(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    author = models.CharField(max_length=50)

# Commands used:
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Write the two commands as comments exactly as shown.