CodexBloom - Programming Q&A Platform

Using Django's ORM with Raw SQL Queries Causes IntegrityError on Bulk Insert

πŸ‘€ Views: 93 πŸ’¬ Answers: 1 πŸ“… Created: 2025-06-30
django sql bulk-insert Python

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help. I'm trying to perform a bulk insert of records into my Django model using raw SQL... However, when I execute the query, I receive an `IntegrityError: UNIQUE constraint failed` on one of the fields, even though I'm sure the data being inserted is unique. Here’s the code I'm using: ```python from django.db import connection def bulk_insert_items(items): with connection.cursor() as cursor: sql = 'INSERT INTO myapp_item (name, description) VALUES (%s, %s)' cursor.executemany(sql, items) items = [ ('item1', 'description1'), ('item2', 'description2'), ('item3', 'description3'), ] bulk_insert_items(items) ``` I confirmed that the items list does not contain duplicates, and I've checked the database to ensure that no other entries with the same names exist prior to running this code. I also tried adding a try/except block around the cursor execution to catch any specific database errors, but I keep running into the same scenario. Additionally, when I try to run the bulk insert with a larger dataset (around 10,000 items), it performs much slower than expected. I suspect that it could be related to the transaction handling or how Django manages the database connections. Does anyone have insights on how to bypass this scenario, or should I consider using Django's `bulk_create()` method instead? What would be the best practice in this case? Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm working with Python in a Docker container on Linux. Any pointers in the right direction? I'm on Windows 11 using the latest version of Python. Thanks for taking the time to read this! Is there a simpler solution I'm overlooking?