How to load initial_data (fixture) after migration and not after syncdb?

Question

I have a bootstrap script that performs syncdb and migrate:

import settings
from django.core.management import setup_environ, call_command

setup_environ(settings)                                         # Setting up the env settings
call_command('syncdb', migrate=True, interactive=False)         # Sync the database

Pre-Requisites:

• django-south for migrations.

Process happening:

• initial_data fixture contains data for a model that is created by migrations.
• syncdb is executed it creates all the tables except for those apps where migrations exists.
• Post syncdb it tries to load initial_data and raises error of db not found because the table for app with migrations were not created by syncdb. [ Problem ]
• Then it performs migration which creates the db.
• Post migration it automatically loads initial_data successfully this time.

Problem:

• How can I get rid of the error, when it tries to load fixture for the table that is not yet created ?
• Can I edit the above script in a way so that it loads initial_data only after performing the migration ?

Answer 1

You could disable loading initial data when syncdb:

call_command('syncdb', load_initial_data=False, interactive=False)
call_command('migrate', interactive=False)

From the source code of syncdb.py:

# Stealth option -- 'load_initial_data' is used by the testing setup                                                               
# process to disable initial fixture loading.                                                                                      
load_initial_data = options.get('load_initial_data', True)

Answer 2

There are a few ways you can solve this:

1. Exclude the apps from the initial data dump by just calling the apps you want to populate data for
2. Could try this library https://github.com/davedash/django-fixture-magic
3. You could write a custom management command to populate the models you require
4. You can also use data migration that comes with south http://south.aeracode.org/docs/tutorial/part3.html

Personally I would go with either 1 or 3. With the first point, store the fixtures individually in each app under a fixtures folder. However, this is pain to update if your models change. So writing a custom management command might be the most painless.