Fixed #10574 -- Documented interaction between annotations and order_by.

In the future, I'd like to fix this properly, but the current behavior
has the advantage of being consistent across the board (and changing it
everywhere is backwards-incompatible with documented functionality).

git-svn-id: http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk@10172 bcc190cf-cafb-0310-a4f2-bffc1f526a37
This commit is contained in:
Malcolm Tredinnick 2009-03-25 09:05:38 +00:00
parent 68288219cd
commit 6fa30faa79
2 changed files with 53 additions and 0 deletions

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@ -296,6 +296,8 @@ a model which defines a default ordering, or when using
ordering was undefined prior to calling ``reverse()``, and will remain ordering was undefined prior to calling ``reverse()``, and will remain
undefined afterward). undefined afterward).
.. _querysets-distinct:
``distinct()`` ``distinct()``
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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@ -315,6 +315,57 @@ will be automatically added to the result set. However, if the ``values()``
clause is applied after the ``annotate()`` clause, you need to explicitly clause is applied after the ``annotate()`` clause, you need to explicitly
include the aggregate column. include the aggregate column.
Interaction with default ordering or ``order_by()``
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fields that are mentioned in the ``order_by()`` part of a queryset (or which
are used in the default ordering on a model) are used when selecting the
output data, even if they are not otherwise specified in the ``values()``
call. These extra fields are used to group "like" results together and they
can make otherwise identical result rows appear to be separate. This shows up,
particularly, when counting things.
By way of example, suppose you have a model like this::
class Item(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=10)
data = models.IntegerField()
class Meta:
ordering = ["name"]
The important part here is the default ordering on the ``name`` field. If you
want to count how many times each distinct ``data`` value appears, you might
try this::
# Warning: not quite correct!
Item.objects.values("data").annotate(Count("id"))
...which will group the ``Item`` objects by their common ``data`` values and
then count the number of ``id`` values in each group. Except that it won't
quite work. The default ordering by ``name`` will also play a part in the
grouping, so this query will group by distinct ``(data, name)`` pairs, which
isn't what you want. Instead, you should construct this queryset::
Item.objects.values("data").annotate(Count("id")).order_by()
...clearing any ordering in the query. You could also order by, say, ``data``
without any harmful effects, since that is already playing a role in the
query.
This behavior is the same as that noted in the queryset documentation for
:ref:`distinct() <querysets-distinct>` and the general rule is the same:
normally you won't want extra columns playing a part in the result, so clear
out the ordering, or at least make sure it's restricted only to those fields
you also select in a ``values()`` call.
.. note::
You might reasonably ask why Django doesn't remove the extraneous columns
for you. The main reason is consistency with ``distinct()`` and other
places: Django **never** removes ordering constraints that you have
specified (and we can't change those other methods' behavior, as that
would violate our :ref:`misc-api-stability` policy).
Aggregating annotations Aggregating annotations
----------------------- -----------------------