Django: get model's fields name

February 21, 2023

I am trying to create a table in react that uses as table information from a django backend.

I would like to fetch the table’s columns from the API, so I tried updating the model:

class Activity(models.Model):
    aid = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
    uid = models.ForeignKey(USER_MODEL, default=1, verbose_name="Category", on_delete=models.SET_DEFAULT,
                            db_column="uid")
    rid = models.IntegerField()
    action = models.TextField(max_length=254, blank=True, null=True)
    time = models.TextField(max_length=254, blank=True, null=True)
    table = models.TextField(max_length=254, blank=True, null=True)

    class Meta:
        managed = False
        db_table = "activity"


    @property
    def fields(self):
        return [f.name for f in self._meta.fields]

I am trying to use fields() as the method to get all the model’s "column" names, so that I can place them in the API’s response, but it does not work.

How can I get a django model’s field names from the model’s meta?

>Solution :

If you want to have method that get’s all field names inside model class I would suggest to changing fields from property to classmethod

class Activity(models.Model):
    aid = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
    uid = models.ForeignKey(USER_MODEL, default=1, verbose_name="Category", on_delete=models.SET_DEFAULT,
                            db_column="uid")
    rid = models.IntegerField()
    action = models.TextField(max_length=254, blank=True, null=True)
    time = models.TextField(max_length=254, blank=True, null=True)
    table = models.TextField(max_length=254, blank=True, null=True)

    class Meta:
        managed = False
        db_table = "activity"


    @classmethod
    def get_field_names(cls):
        return [f.name for f in cls._meta.fields]