Integrating Django with a legacy database

This document assumes you know the Django basics, as covered in thetutorial.

Once you’ve got Django set up, you’ll follow this general process to integratewith an existing database.

You’ll need to tell Django what your database connection parameters are, andwhat the name of the database is. Do that by editing the setting and assigning values to the following keys for the 'default'connection:

• NAME
• PASSWORD

Save this as a file by using standard Unix output redirection:

This feature is meant as a shortcut, not as definitive model generation. See thedocumentation of inspectdb for more information.

Once you’ve cleaned up your models, name the file models.py and put it inthe Python package that holds your app. Then add the app to your setting.

If you do want to allow Django to manage the table’s lifecycle, you’ll need tochange the managed option above to True(or remove it because True is its default value).

Next, run the command to install any extra needed databaserecords such as admin permissions and content types:

Those are the basic steps – from here you’ll want to tweak the models Djangogenerated until they work the way you’d like. Try accessing your data via theDjango database API, and try editing objects via Django’s admin site, and editthe models file accordingly.