"For a long time I wanted to document something I have done many times in production systems but never explained clearly: using Django ORM as a standalone module to connect to an existing database. In my work I have often dealt with legacy systems where the only reliable source of truth was the database itself. In those situations, Django ORM became my Swiss army knife."
"With just a few lines of configuration I could connect to an existing database, introspect its schema using inspectdb, and start querying data from the shell through an API I already knew. Recently I realized I had finally found a simple and reproducible way to demonstrate this approach step by step, so that anyone can try it locally and understand how Django ORM can operate independently from a full Django project."
"Every day we interact with many applications that rely on embedded databases. The most common example is the browser, which usually stores information such as bookmarks and history in SQLite files. SQLite is fully supported by Django out of the box through its built-in backend, which makes it a perfect candidate for a reproducible experiment. My current browser (Firefox) stores bookmarks in a SQLite file called places.sqlite."
Django ORM can run independently of a full Django project by providing minimal settings, configuring DATABASES and INSTALLED_APPS, and calling django.setup() before using models. Inspectdb introspects an existing database schema and generates model code that maps to legacy tables. SQLite serves as a convenient, reproducible example because many applications—like browsers—store data in SQLite files such as places.sqlite. The practical workflow is: create minimal configuration, run inspectdb to produce models.py, adjust generated models if necessary, and then query the database from the shell or scripts using the familiar Django ORM API.
Read at Paolo Melchiorre
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