Commit 1d1cfd0b authored by Andrew Godwin's avatar Andrew Godwin
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Document new field API in release notes

parent de64c4d6
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@@ -57,6 +57,33 @@ but a few of the key features are:
  will still work, but that method name is deprecated and you should change
  it as soon as possible (nothing more than renaming is required).

New method on Field subclasses
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To help power both schema migrations and composite keys, the Field API now
has a new required method: ``deconstruct()``.

This method takes no arguments, and returns a tuple of four items:

* ``name``: The field's attribute name on its parent model, or None if it is not part of a model
* ``path``: A dotted, Python path to the class of this field, including the class name.
* ``args``: Positional arguments, as a list
* ``kwargs``: Keyword arguments, as a dict

These four values allow any field to be serialized into a file, as well as
allowing the field to be copied safely, both essential parts of these new features.

This change should not affect you unless you write custom Field subclasses;
if you do, you may need to reimplement the ``deconstruct()`` method if your
subclass changes the method signature of ``__init__`` in any way. If your
field just inherits from a built-in Django field and doesn't override ``__init__``,
no changes are necessary.

If you do need to override ``deconstruct()``, a good place to start is the
built-in Django fields (``django/db/models/fields/__init__.py``) as several
fields, including ``DecimalField`` and ``DateField``, override it and show how
to call the method on the superclass and simply add or remove extra arguments.

Calling custom ``QuerySet`` methods from the ``Manager``
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~