Django - How to create and migrate two tables for development and production on same database? (prefix in front when running as dev)

Question

I am trying to have two tables in one database like below based on development and production environment.

• development dev_my_comments
• production my_comments

I tried using environment variable while declaring table like below

class Data_Comments(models.Model):
    class Status(models.IntegerChoices):
        GENERAL = 0
        YELLOW = 1
        RED = 2
    ord_no = models.ForeignKey(Data_Import, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='comments')
    comment = models.CharField(max_length=500, null=True)
    strike_comment_type =  models.IntegerField(choices=Status.choices, default=0)
    strike_date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True, blank=True)
    updated_by = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.PROTECT, related_name='comments_user')

    class Meta:
        db_table = 'my_comments' if settings.ENV_TYPE == 'PRO' else 'dev_my_comments'
        app_label = "my_app"

by using this option, make migrations just renames existing tables instead of creating new... (wanted to have both the tables and want to migrate changes on both tables)

is there something I am missing to make it work?

Answer 1

I don't think that would work... because Django will create migration files and the value for db_table will be assigned to dev_my_comments. And your production will have the dev_my_comments as your table name as well.

I've not seen this pattern for naming tables, is there any reason you have to share the DB but name the table differently between dev & prod?

Answer 2

I don't think it's a good idea. Anyway you can pass db_table as a constant and django will use the variable for the migrations.

db_table = TABLE_NAME

note* you can't change it after running migrate tho.