Django: Set foreign key using integer?

Question

Is there a way to set foreign key relationship using the integer id of a model? This would be for optimization purposes.

For example, suppose I have an Employee model:

class Employee(models.Model):
  first_name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
  last_name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
  type = models.ForeignKey('EmployeeType')

and

EmployeeType(models.Model):
  type = models.CharField(max_length=100)

I want the flexibility of having unlimited employee types, but in the deployed application there will likely be only a single type so I'm wondering if there is a way to hardcode the id and set the relationship this way. This way I can avoid a db call to get the EmployeeType object first.

Answer 1

Yep:

employee = Employee(first_name="Name", last_name="Name")
employee.type_id = 4
employee.save()

ForeignKey fields store their value in an attribute with _id at the end, which you can access directly to avoid visiting the database.

The _id version of a ForeignKey is a particularly useful aspect of Django, one that everyone should know and use from time to time when appropriate.