Django, creating multiple identical fields in the same model

Question

I am completely new to Django, so forgive me if this is the wrong approach. While I'm trying to learn Django, I like to do my own little practice problems to solidify my understanding.

Working with models I created the example model objects:

from django.db import models


class Food(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(
        max_length=50,
        help_text="Name of Fruit or Vegetable"
    )
    food_group = models.CharField(
        max_length=9,


class Vitamins(models.Model):
    name = models.ForeignKey(
        Food,
        on_delete=models.CASCADE
    )
    vitamin_A = models.CharField(
        max_length=20,
    )
    .
    .
    .
    folate = models.CharField(
        max_length=20,
        help_text="Folic Acid"
    )

In my object, I have 5 identical fields that store text ie (Trace amounts, 5mg, No Information). However it seems tedious to type out every field. Is there a more efficient way to do this?

Answer 1

I think you should take advantage of the relational database and create a model for Vitamin, with name and folate, something like this

from django.db import models


class Food(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(
        max_length=50,
        help_text="Name of Fruit or Vegetable"
    )


class Vitamin(models.Model):
    food = models.ForeignKey(
        Food,
        on_delete=models.CASCADE
    )
    name = models.CharField(
        max_length=20,
    )
    folate = models.CharField(
        max_length=20,
        help_text="Folic Acid"
    )

And then for every Vitamin in the Food you create a record. It can be 1, 2 or N. This is very flexible and scaleable.