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Django QuerySet Filtering on Related Models Causing Unexpected Empty Results

👀 Views: 16 đŸ’Ŧ Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-03
django queryset filtering Python

I'm trying to debug Can someone help me understand I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock. I'm running into an scenario where my Django QuerySet is returning empty results when trying to filter based on a related model's field. I'm using Django 4.0, and I have a `Book` model that has a foreign key relationship to an `Author` model. The `Author` model has a field `is_active` that I want to filter by. Here's a simplified version of my models: ```python from django.db import models class Author(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=100) is_active = models.BooleanField(default=True) class Book(models.Model): title = models.CharField(max_length=200) author = models.ForeignKey(Author, on_delete=models.CASCADE) ``` I intended to fetch all books where the author is active like this: ```python active_books = Book.objects.filter(author__is_active=True) ``` However, `active_books` returns an empty list, even though I have several books with active authors in the database. I've double-checked the database and confirmed that there are authors with `is_active=True`. To troubleshoot, I tried running the query in the Django shell, and it yields the same empty result. I also tested by hardcoding the condition in the database to see if it was an scenario with the query. For instance, I manually created a book and author instance in the shell: ```python active_author = Author.objects.create(name='John Doe', is_active=True) Book.objects.create(title='Django for Beginners', author=active_author) ``` After creating the entries, I ran the filter again, but still got an empty list. I've also confirmed that the `author` field in the `Book` instances is properly populated. Is there something I'm missing with the related model filtering, or could this be a bug in Django 4.0? Any insights would be appreciated! My team is using Python for this desktop app. Thanks for any help you can provide! What are your experiences with this? I'm working in a Windows 11 environment.