Removing a Django App

In order to completely uninstall a Django application you have to not only delete the database tables - but you also need to remove the related contenttypes.

Let’s look at two ways to handle this: Manually and with South.

In this case, the application name is called customers, and it contains the following tables within models.py:

class Student(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=30)
    courses = models.ManyToManyField('Course')

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

class Course(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=30)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

Also, I am using a sqlite3 database called test.db, which contains this data.

Let’s say we want to drop the Course table (for reasons unknown).

Manually
South

Manually

Navigate to your project working directory and drop the table:

$ python manage.py sqlclear customers > drop_customers_customerprofile

Remove the app from the INSTALLED_APPS section in settings.py and delete any associated URL patterns from urls.py.
Drop the database tables:

$ sqlite3 test.db
sqlite> DROP TABLE customers_customerprofile;

equivalent MySQL command - $ mysql -u root -p <database_name> < drop_<app_name>_<table_name>.sql

Clean up the related contenttypes from the Shell:

$ python manage.py shell
>>> from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
>>> ContentType.objects.filter(app_label='customers').delete()

You can now delete the app folder as well as any associated media files and/or templates. Finally, make sure to uninstall any associated packages or dependencies using pip uninstall <package_name>. Make sure to use virtualenv.

South

I use South with all my Django projects, so I tend to prefer this method. Let’s take a look.

Setup the initial migration and push it through:

$ python manage.py schemamigration customers --initial
$ python manage.py migrate customers

Remove the CustomerProfile class from models.py.
Setup the migration to delete the table:

$ python manage.py schemamigration customers --auto

Update the migration file 0002_auto__del_customerprofile.py, to clean up the related contenttypes as well as delete the table from the database, by updating the forwards function:

def forwards(self, orm):
   # Deleting model 'CustomerProfile'
   db.delete_table(u'customers_customerprofile')
   from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
   ContentType.objects.filter(app_label='customers').delete()

Push the migration through:

$ python manage.py migrate customers

Fake a zero migration to remove the migration history and clear up the South tables:

$ python manage.py migrate customers zero --fake

Remove the app from the INSTALLED_APPS section in settings.py and delete any associated URL patterns from urls.py. Then delete the app folder and any related media files and/or templates. Finally, make sure to uninstall any packages or dependencies using pip unistall <package_name>. Make sure to use virtualenv.

Comment if you have questions. Cheers!

Contents

Manually

South