Filtering on many to many in Django

Question

i can't get this query to return more than one exercise object, even though if i use the generated query in sql it returns both exercises as i expect

class Workout(models.Model):
    created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    workout_type = models.ForeignKey(WorkoutType, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    exercises = models.ManyToManyField(Exercise, through=u'WorkoutExercise', related_name=u'workout_exercises')


class WorkoutExercise(models.Model):
    exercise = models.ForeignKey(Exercise)
    workout = models.ForeignKey(Workout)

class Exercise(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255, unique=True)

And the query is to return every exercise for the latest workout

workouts = Workout.objects.latest('created')
    exercises = Exercise.objects.filter(workout_exercises__exact=workouts)

As stated, this only returns a single exercise when the query it generates should and does return 2 in sql.

Answer 1

It should work without __exact :

exercises = Exercise.objects.filter(workout_exercises=workouts)

But why do you not use the exercises field directly:

workout = Workout.objects.latest('created')  # singular sounds more correct to me
exercises = workout.exercises.all()

BTW, that related name is confusing. I'd recommend workouts , or the like, since you are managing Workout instances via exercise.workout_exercises , not WorkoutExercise instances.