Data models

The framework itself defines no models. The contrib apps ship the only models in the django/ package; this page is the cheat sheet for what they are and how they relate.

django.contrib.auth

graph TD
    User
    Group
    Permission
    ContentType[("ContentType<br/>(contenttypes)")]

    User -->|user_permissions M2M| Permission
    User -->|groups M2M| Group
    Group -->|permissions M2M| Permission
    Permission -->|content_type FK| ContentType

Model	File	Notes
AbstractBaseUser	auth/base_user.py	Minimum user shape
AbstractUser	auth/models.py	Standard user (username, email, names, dates, permissions)
User	auth/models.py	Concrete AbstractUser; the default AUTH_USER_MODEL
Group	auth/models.py	Named bundle of Permission objects
Permission	auth/models.py	(content_type, codename, name) tuple
PermissionsMixin	auth/models.py	Adds is_superuser, groups, user_permissions
AnonymousUser	auth/models.py	Singleton for unauthenticated requests; not stored in DB

User.objects is a UserManager (auth/models.py) that exposes create_user(...) and create_superuser(...).

django.contrib.contenttypes

Model	File	Notes
ContentType	contenttypes/models.py	One row per installed model; (app_label, model) is unique
GenericForeignKey	contenttypes/fields.py	A FK that points at any model via (content_type, object_id)
GenericRelation	contenttypes/fields.py	Reverse relation accessor on the target side

ContentType rows are seeded by a post_migrate signal handler. Each row maps to a Python Model class via ContentType.model_class().

django.contrib.sites

Model	File	Notes
Site	sites/models.py	(domain, name) for multi-site deployments

SITE_ID is the active site identifier. request.site is set by CurrentSiteMiddleware.

django.contrib.sessions

Model	File	Notes
Session	sessions/models.py	The DB-backed session store; (session_key, session_data, expire_date)

Other backends (cache, file, signed_cookies) don't use this model.

django.contrib.admin

Model	File	Notes
LogEntry	admin/models.py	Records every admin action: who, what, when, action_flag

LogEntry.objects.log_action(...) is called by the change/add/delete views. The list of recent actions is shown on the admin home page.

django.contrib.flatpages

Model	File	Notes
FlatPage	flatpages/models.py	URL → HTML; M2M to Site

The middleware (FlatpageFallbackMiddleware) intercepts 404s and serves a flatpage if one matches.

django.contrib.redirects

Model	File	Notes
Redirect	redirects/models.py	(site, old_path, new_path); FK to Site

RedirectFallbackMiddleware intercepts 404s and redirects.

django.contrib.messages

messages doesn't define any models — messages are stored in the cookie or session backends.

django.contrib.staticfiles

staticfiles doesn't define any models — it's purely a collectstatic command and storage.

django.contrib.gis

GIS doesn't add new top-level models, but adds a number of geometry fields:

• PointField
• LineStringField
• PolygonField
• MultiPointField
• MultiLineStringField
• MultiPolygonField
• GeometryField
• GeometryCollectionField
• RasterField

Plus the value types in django.contrib.gis.geos (GEOSGeometry, Point, LineString, Polygon, …) and django.contrib.gis.gdal (OGRGeometry, Layer, DataSource).

django.contrib.postgres

PostgreSQL-only fields:

• ArrayField (any field type as elements).
• HStoreField (key-value map).
• RangeField and subclasses: IntegerRangeField, DecimalRangeField, DateRangeField, DateTimeRangeField.

Built-in field types (across all backends)

These are not contrib — they live at django/db/models/fields/ and are the public ORM API.

Field	File	Notes
AutoField	__init__.py	Auto-incrementing integer PK
BigAutoField, SmallAutoField	__init__.py	64- and 16-bit variants
CharField	__init__.py	Variable-length text with max_length
TextField	__init__.py	Unbounded text
IntegerField, BigIntegerField, SmallIntegerField, PositiveIntegerField, PositiveSmallIntegerField, PositiveBigIntegerField	__init__.py	Integer variants
BooleanField	__init__.py
DateField, DateTimeField, TimeField	__init__.py
DurationField	__init__.py	timedelta
DecimalField	__init__.py	Fixed-precision decimal
FloatField	__init__.py
EmailField, URLField, SlugField	__init__.py	CharField subclasses with validators
UUIDField	__init__.py
IPAddressField, GenericIPAddressField	__init__.py
BinaryField	__init__.py	bytes
JSONField	json.py	All-backend JSON
FileField, ImageField, FilePathField	files.py	Files on disk
GeneratedField	generated.py	Database-side computed columns
ForeignKey, OneToOneField, ManyToManyField	related.py	Relationships
CompositePrimaryKey	composite.py	Multi-column PK (added in 5.2)

Where to read the source

• django/db/models/fields/__init__.py — most field types.
• django/db/models/fields/related.py — relations.
• django/db/models/fields/json.py — JSONField.
• django/db/models/fields/files.py — FileField, ImageField.
• django/db/models/fields/generated.py — GeneratedField.
• django/db/models/fields/composite.py — CompositePrimaryKey.
• django/contrib/auth/models.py — auth models.
• django/contrib/contenttypes/models.py — ContentType.