While Django is best suited for developing new applications, it’s quite\npossible to integrate it into legacy databases. Django includes a couple of\nutilities to automate as much of this process as possible.
\nThis document assumes you know the Django basics, as covered in the\ntutorial.
\nOnce you’ve got Django set up, you’ll follow this general process to integrate\nwith an existing database.
\nYou’ll need to tell Django what your database connection parameters are, and\nwhat the name of the database is. Do that by editing the DATABASES\nsetting and assigning values to the following keys for the 'default'\nconnection:
Django comes with a utility called inspectdb that can create models\nby introspecting an existing database. You can view the output by running this\ncommand:
$ python manage.py inspectdb\nSave this as a file by using standard Unix output redirection:
\n$ python manage.py inspectdb > models.py\nThis feature is meant as a shortcut, not as definitive model generation. See the\ndocumentation of inspectdb for more information.
Once you’ve cleaned up your models, name the file models.py and put it in\nthe Python package that holds your app. Then add the app to your\nINSTALLED_APPS setting.
By default, inspectdb creates unmanaged models. That is,\nmanaged = False in the model’s Meta class tells Django not to manage\neach table’s creation, modification, and deletion:
class Person(models.Model):\n id = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True)\n first_name = models.CharField(max_length=70)\n\n class Meta:\n managed = False\n db_table = "CENSUS_PERSONS"\nIf you do want to allow Django to manage the table’s lifecycle, you’ll need to\nchange the managed option above to True\n(or remove it because True is its default value).
Next, run the migrate command to install any extra needed database\nrecords such as admin permissions and content types:
$ python manage.py migrate\nThose are the basic steps – from here you’ll want to tweak the models Django\ngenerated until they work the way you’d like. Try accessing your data via the\nDjango database API, and try editing objects via Django’s admin site, and edit\nthe models file accordingly.
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