Django naming conventions for dates

Question

Is there any naming convention for the dates "created" and "last edit" in Django?

i.e., in the Symfony Framework, these fields are called by default:

• created_at
• updated_at

Answer 1

In Django origin models, these fields are named based on the type of model, i.e.

• auth.User: date_joined
• comments.Comment: submit_date

Therefore, probably we should follow this agreement.

Answer 2

Indeed, as far as I can tell, there is no canonical agreement for Django, but I really like the Rails convention:

• created_at for DateTime fields
• created_on for date fields

created works great for creation dates, but as soon as you have more ambiguous fields like activated , this becomes a problem. Is this a boolean or a date / date? Naming conventions exist to help developers understand code faster and spend less time on unimportant decisions. This is the philosophy behind the configuration convention , which is big in the Rails community, but unfortunately not so much in Django. This confusion that I mentioned, for example, is typical, and therefore I prefer to always be more clear:

• If it is boolean is_activated
• If it is datetime activated_at
• If it's just activated_on date

I heard people say that “you should not mix field names with data types”, but in my opinion this is pretty empty advice and I never heard any specific arguments. If we want to optimize code readability and decision making, than I really think explicit naming conventions are the way to go.

Answer 3

I prefer created and updated without the _at suffix. I do not know of any "canonical" preference for designating fields.

For what it's worth, I think Rails uses created_at / created_on and updated_at / updated_on .

Answer 4

I don’t think there is something like a canonical way to call such things in Django. Some parts are well covered by PEP8 , mainly because this kind of thing goes beyond Django, as this is a much more important issue (and possibly households).

However, I believe that these fields are usually called created_at and updated_at , and I personally follow this convention when writing my own code. I recommend avoiding names like created or updated , as they are ambiguous (although some popular libs use this style): are they logical or something else? is_created / is_updated , if you need it, these are the best options.