I think you're probably using the admin's bulk delete feature, and are running into the fact that the admin's bulk delete method doesn't call delete()
(see the related ticket).
I've got round this in the past by writing a custom admin action for deleting models.
If you're not using the admin's bulk delete method (e.g. you're clicking the delete button on the object's edit page) then something else is going on.
See the warning here:
The “delete selected objects” action
uses QuerySet.delete()
for efficiency
reasons, which has an important
caveat: your model’s delete()
method
will not be called.
If you wish to override this behavior,
simply write a custom action which
accomplishes deletion in your
preferred manner – for example, by
calling Model.delete()
for each of the
selected items.
For more background on bulk deletion,
see the documentation on object
deletion.
My custom admin model looks like this:
from photoblog.models import PhotoBlogEntry
from django.contrib import admin
class PhotoBlogEntryAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
actions=['really_delete_selected']
def get_actions(self, request):
actions = super(PhotoBlogEntryAdmin, self).get_actions(request)
del actions['delete_selected']
return actions
def really_delete_selected(self, request, queryset):
for obj in queryset:
obj.delete()
if queryset.count() == 1:
message_bit = "1 photoblog entry was"
else:
message_bit = "%s photoblog entries were" % queryset.count()
self.message_user(request, "%s successfully deleted." % message_bit)
really_delete_selected.short_description = "Delete selected entries"
admin.site.register(PhotoBlogEntry, PhotoBlogEntryAdmin)