Getting Choices for CharField from external API

Using Django Forms & APIs
1

Hi!

I am working with data that I get from an external source. One field is not easily converted to something user readable. The data I get from the API is “encoded”. It returns as ##user00, ##user01, ##user02 etc.

But there is an API endpoint that returns the translation table. This table may change or at least be updated.

Can I get the CharField with Choices behavior but not enforce the data validation and update the choices without a migration?

Category field below is stored as ##user00, ##user01 , ##user02 etc but I want it to be showed to the user as something else.

class Product(models.Model):
    objects = ProductQuerySet.as_manager()
    product_url = models.CharField(max_length=200, unique=True)
    product_id = models.CharField(max_length=200, null=True, blank=True)
    description = models.CharField(max_length=200, null=True, blank=True)
    category = models.CharField(max_length=200, null=True, blank=True)
2

Yes, there are a couple different ways to handle this.

Probably the cleanest and easiest way would be to store those translation table entries in a separate model. You can then use the ModelChoiceField to use that table as your choices and validators.

3

Thank you, but I can only find ModelChoiceField as part of a form. Not as a model field. I primarily want this for displaying data. In the Model field reference I can only find Choices as part of other fields.

4

You would also be able to use that table for any purpose. You would not be restricted to using that model only for the ModelChoiceField. It becomes a general translation table that you can use anywhere.

5

What I am thinking now, to get filters to work and data display to show a friendly name, is that I create a new model with the translation. Have a one-to-many field in the Product model that I connect to the new model to get filters etc to hopefully work kind of out of the box.

If I would need to push info about the product back to the API it would make it a bit trickier but at the moment it is one way.