db.models.ForeignKey

class ForeignKey(othermodel, on_delete, **options) [source]

A many-to-one relationship. Requires a positional argument: the class to which the model is related.

To create a recursive relationship – an object that has a many-to-one relationship with itself – use models.ForeignKey('self', on_delete=models.CASCADE).

If you need to create a relationship on a model that has not yet been defined, you can use the name of the model, rather than the model object itself:

from django.db import models

class Car(models.Model):
    manufacturer = models.ForeignKey(
        'Manufacturer',
        on_delete=models.CASCADE,
    )
    # ...

class Manufacturer(models.Model):
    # ...
    pass

Relationships defined this way on abstract models are resolved when the model is subclassed as a concrete model and are not relative to the abstract model’s app_label:

from django.db import models

class AbstractCar(models.Model):
    manufacturer = models.ForeignKey('Manufacturer', on_delete=models.CASCADE)

    class Meta:
        abstract = True

from django.db import models
from products.models import AbstractCar

class Manufacturer(models.Model):
    pass

class Car(AbstractCar):
    pass

# Car.manufacturer will point to `production.Manufacturer` here.

To refer to models defined in another application, you can explicitly specify a model with the full application label. For example, if the Manufacturer model above is defined in another application called production, you’d need to use:

class Car(models.Model):
    manufacturer = models.ForeignKey(
        'production.Manufacturer',
        on_delete=models.CASCADE,
    )

This sort of reference can be useful when resolving circular import dependencies between two applications.

A database index is automatically created on the ForeignKey. You can disable this by setting db_index to False. You may want to avoid the overhead of an index if you are creating a foreign key for consistency rather than joins, or if you will be creating an alternative index like a partial or multiple column index.