django-searchfield

Django field that concatenates multiple fields into a search-indexed string.

Purpose

Create a full-text search field by combining multiple model fields. Values are concatenated with _ by default for simple startswith / icontains queries.

Installation

pip install django-searchfield

Quick Start

Using SearchField directly

from django.db import models
from searchfield import SearchField

class Product(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    code = models.IntegerField()
    created_date = models.DateField()

    search = SearchField(source_fields=["name", "code", "created_date"])

Using the decorator

from django.db import models
from searchfield import add_searchfield

@add_searchfield(search=["title", "category"])
class Article(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    category = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    content = models.TextField()

Path resolution (relations, JSON)

class Creditor(models.Model):
    contact = models.ForeignKey(Contact, ...)
    contact_data = models.JSONField()  # {"firstname": "...", "lastname": "..."}

    search = SearchField(source_fields=[
        "name",
        "contact.lastname",       # relation
        "contact_data.firstname", # JSON keys
    ])

Features

• Automatic generation: Values are generated automatically before saving
• Path resolution: Source paths support dotted notation (name, contact.lastname, contact_data.firstname for JSON)
• Search indexing: Normalized values (NFKD, lowercase) concatenated with _ for startswith/icontains
• Duplicate removal: Duplicate values from source fields are removed before concatenation
• Type formatting: Automatically formats dates, numbers, booleans
• Read-only: Field is editable=False
• db_index=True: Indexed for search performance
• unique=False: Not unique by default (allows homonyms); pass unique=True to enforce

Field Properties

• editable=False: Read-only
• blank=True, null=True: Optional (empty if all source fields are empty)
• db_index=True: Indexed for search queries
• unique=False: Homonyms allowed by default

Development

./service.py dev install-dev
./service.py dev test

License

MIT