Django ManyToManyField ordering using through?

Question

Here is a snippet of how my models are setup:

class Profile(models.Model):     
    name = models.CharField(max_length=32)

    accout = models.ManyToManyField(
        'project.Account',
        through='project.ProfileAccount'
    )

    def __unicode__(self)
        return self.name

class Accounts(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=32)
    type = models.CharField(max_length=32)

    class Meta:
        ordering = ('name',)

    def __unicode__(self)
        return self.name

class ProfileAccounts(models.Model):
    profile = models.ForeignKey('project.Profile')
    account = models.ForeignKey('project.Accounts')

    number = models.PositiveIntegerField()

    class Meta:
        ordering = ('number',)

Then when I access the Accounts, how can I sort by 'number' in the intermediary ProfileAccounts model, rather than the default 'name' in the Accounts model?:

for acct_number in self.profile.accounts.all():
    pass

This does not work, but is the gist of how I want it to access this data:

for scanline_field in self.scanline_profile.fields.all().order_by('number'):
    pass

Answer 1

There's a typo in the Profile (it's "accout" when I think you mean "account"), but more importantly you have your singular/plural forms mixed up in the model.

In Django the practice is generally to name your classes singular, and your ManyToManyField names plural. So:

class Profile(models.Model):     
    name = models.CharField(max_length=32)

    accounts = models.ManyToManyField(
        'Account',
        through='ProfileAccount'
    )

    def __unicode__(self)
        return self.name

class Account(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=32)
    type = models.CharField(max_length=32)

    class Meta:
        ordering = ('name',)

    def __unicode__(self)
        return self.name

class ProfileAccount(models.Model):
    profile = models.ForeignKey(Profile)
    account = models.ForeignKey(Account)

    number = models.PositiveIntegerField()

    class Meta:
        ordering = ('number',)

I'm a little confused at what you're trying to do with this model, but if you make those changes, then for acct_number in self.profile.accounts.all().order_by('number'): should work. Assuming no other issues.