{"title":"Providing initial data for models","version":"1.10","locale":"en","docname":"howto/initial-data","url":"/en/1.10/howto/initial-data/","canonical":"https://djangodocs.dev/en/1.10/howto/initial-data/","summary":"It’s sometimes useful to pre-populate your database with hard-coded data when you’re first setting up an app. You can provide initial data with fixtures or…","html":"

Providing initial data for modelsLink to this heading#

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It’s sometimes useful to pre-populate your database with hard-coded data when\nyou’re first setting up an app. You can provide initial data with fixtures or\nmigrations.

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Providing initial data with fixturesLink to this heading#

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A fixture is a collection of data that Django knows how to import into a\ndatabase. The most straightforward way of creating a fixture if you’ve already\ngot some data is to use the manage.py dumpdata command.\nOr, you can write fixtures by hand; fixtures can be written as JSON, XML or YAML\n(with PyYAML installed) documents. The serialization documentation has more details about each of these supported\nserialization formats.

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As an example, though, here’s what a fixture for a simple Person model might\nlook like in JSON:

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[\n  {\n    "model": "myapp.person",\n    "pk": 1,\n    "fields": {\n      "first_name": "John",\n      "last_name": "Lennon"\n    }\n  },\n  {\n    "model": "myapp.person",\n    "pk": 2,\n    "fields": {\n      "first_name": "Paul",\n      "last_name": "McCartney"\n    }\n  }\n]\n
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And here’s that same fixture as YAML:

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- model: myapp.person\n  pk: 1\n  fields:\n    first_name: John\n    last_name: Lennon\n- model: myapp.person\n  pk: 2\n  fields:\n    first_name: Paul\n    last_name: McCartney\n
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You’ll store this data in a fixtures directory inside your app.

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Loading data is easy: just call manage.py loaddata\n<fixturename>, where <fixturename> is the name of the fixture file\nyou’ve created. Each time you run loaddata, the data will be read\nfrom the fixture and re-loaded into the database. Note this means that if you\nchange one of the rows created by a fixture and then run loaddata\nagain, you’ll wipe out any changes you’ve made.

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Where Django finds fixture filesLink to this heading#

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By default, Django looks in the fixtures directory inside each app for\nfixtures. You can set the FIXTURE_DIRS setting to a list of\nadditional directories where Django should look.

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When running manage.py loaddata, you can also\nspecify a path to a fixture file, which overrides searching the usual\ndirectories.

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Providing initial data with migrationsLink to this heading#

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If you want to automatically load initial data for an app, don’t use fixtures.\nInstead, create a migration for your application with\nRunPython or\nRunSQL operations.

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