Django model attribute to refer to arbitrary model instance

Question

I'm working on a logging app in Django to record when models in other apps are created, changed, or deleted. All I really need to record is the user who did it, a timestamp, a type of action, and the item that was changed. The user, timestamp, and action type are all easy, but I'm not sure what a good way to store the affected item is beyond storing an id value and a class name so the item can be retrieved later. I imagine that storing the class name will result in a bit of a hacky solution in order to find the actual class, so I'm wondering if there's a better way. Does anyone know of one?

Answer 1

Use generic relations which do just that (use instance id and model class) but are integrated in Django and you also get a shortcut attribute that returns related instance so you don't have to query it yourself. Example usage.

Answer 2

Check out generic relations.