Django check if a related object exists error: RelatedObjectDoesNotExist

Question

I have a method has_related_object in my model that needs to check if a related object exists

class Business(base):
      name =  models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, null=True)

  def has_related_object(self):
        return (self.customers is not None) and (self.car is not None)


class Customer(base):
      name =  models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, null=True)
      person = models.OneToOneField('Business', related_name="customer")

But I get the error:

Business.has_related_object()

RelatedObjectDoesNotExist: Business has no customer.

Answer 1

Use hasattr(self, 'customers') to avoid the exception check as recommended in Django docs:

def has_related_object(self):
    return hasattr(self, 'customers') and self.car is not None

Answer 2

Although it's an old question, I thought this can be helpful for someone looking to handle this type of exception, especially when you want to check for OneToOne relations.

My solution is to use ObjectDoesNotExist from django.core.exceptions:

from django.core.exceptions import ObjectDoesNotExist

class Business(base):
      name =  models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, null=True)

    def has_related_object(self):
        try:
            self.customers
            self.car
            return True
        except ObjectDoesNotExist:
            return False


class Customer(base):
      name =  models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, null=True)
      person = models.OneToOneField('Business', related_name="customer")

Answer 3

You probably had created the user before while debuging and has no profile, so even after now coding the automation in, they still have no profile try the code below in your signal.py file, then create a superuser, log in as the super user and then add the first account's profile from there. That worked for me...

@receiver(post_save, sender=User, dispatch_uid='save_new_user_profile')
def save_profile(sender, instance, created, **kwargs):
    user = instance
    if created:
        profile = UserProfile(user=user)
        profile.save()