Creating a custom Django DateTimeField model
In my last post I ran into a problem. A legacy database stores values as BigInt in MySQL using Unix time. Django uses datetime. I want the nice validation and widgets from Django’s DateTimeField. Here’s how to solve in.
Create a new field, I called it UnixTimestampField and overrode models.DateTimeField.
from django.db import models
from datetime import datetime
from time import strftime, mktime
import time
class UnixTimestampField(models.DateTimeField):
__metaclass__ = models.SubfieldBase
def __init__(self, null=False, blank=False, **kwargs):
super(UnixTimestampField, self).__init__(**kwargs)
def db_type(self):
typ=['bigint']
if self.isnull:
typ += ['NULL']
return ' '.join(typ)
def to_python(self, value):
super(UnixTimestampField, self)
try:
return datetime.fromtimestamp(float(value))
except:
return value
def get_db_prep_value(self, value):
if value==None:
return None
return time.mktime(value.timetuple())
def get_prep_value(self, value):
if value==None:
return None
return time.mktime(value.timetuple())
It seems to work. I’ll update though if I run into any trouble down the line or re-factor it. This is my first attempt at making a custom Django Model Field.