How to ask good Django ORM questions / ORM / 2025-09-20

TL;DR

You can click here to see example, but I'd rather you should read it all

Introduction

Getting help with issues can be frustrating when your question doesn't get the responses you need. More often than not, the way you ask your question can make a big difference between getting a quick answer and simply no answer at all, especially when you consider the medium you're trying to share your problem through (Forums, Reddit, Discord, ...). The vastness of Django and its ORM makes things even more complicated.

This post will describe what people will expect from you when you ask an ORM question.

Clearly explain your problem

Start with a concise summary of what you're trying to accomplish. Prefer to use complete descriptions:

I need to get all users who have made at least 3 purchases in the last 30 days, but my current query is taking 5+ seconds to execute.
I'm trying to get all orders sorted by the ones with highest item value

Avoid vague descriptions like:

My queries aren't working
I'm having database issues
My queries are slow

Also avoid XY Problem like:

I'm getting errors with cursor.execute()
How can I make this loop faster? It's taking 30 seconds to process 1000 orders

You should explain your end goal from a functional requirement perspective rather a technical requirement.

Provide minimal but complete models

Share the simplest version of your models that demonstrates the problem. Strip out irrelevant fields, functions or classes and focus only on the relationships and fields involved in your issue.

class Item(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    price = models.DecimalField(max_digits=10, decimal_places=2)

class Order(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    items = models.ManyToManyField(Item)

Do not dump your entire models.py file with 20+ fields per model when only 2-3 are relevant to your question.

Show what you've tried

Include the actual code you've attempted, not pseudocode or descriptions. This helps others understand your thought process and avoid suggesting things you've already tried.

# What I tried:
orders_by_value = Order.objects.annotate(
    total_value=Sum('items__price')
).order_by('-total_value')

Also include some sample data that can clearly demonstrate the difference in expectations.

# Create some users
user1 = User.objects.create_user(username='alice')
user2 = User.objects.create_user(username='bob')

# Create some items with different prices
laptop = Item.objects.create(name='Laptop', price=999.99)
mouse = Item.objects.create(name='Wireless Mouse', price=29.99)
keyboard = Item.objects.create(name='Mechanical Keyboard', price=149.99)

order1 = Order.objects.create(user=user1)
order1.items.set([laptop, mouse, keyboard])

Be wary of what you strip out or mask; You could be leaving out vital culprit information from the person helping you. You will also often be asked if you've tested those in the django shell and/or whether you've used Django Debug Toolbar to debug your queries in case of performance problems or other.

Describe the expected vs actual results

Be specific about:

What you expected to happen
What actually happened instead
Include any error messages (full tracebacks, not just "it doesn't work")

Example:

Expected: Orders sorted by highest total item value first
Actual: Getting orders with duplicate entries and incorrect totals when orders have multiple items
Error: No errors, but results seem incorrect

Include relevant context

Add details that might affect the solution:

Django version
Database backend (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite)
Rough data scale ("table has 10K users, 100K purchases")
Performance requirements if relevant

Complete example

Problem: I'm trying to get the total of unique tags but I'm getting more than I expect.

Models:

class Post(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    tag = models.CharField(max_length=50)

What I tried:

from django.db.models import Sum

Post.objects.bulk_create([
    Post(title='First Post', tag='django'),
    Post(title='Second Post', tag='django'),
    Post(title='Third Post', tag='python'),
    Post(title='Fourth Post', tag='python'),
    Post(title='Fifth Post', tag='orm'),
])

total_tags = Post.objects.aggregate(tag_count=Count('tag'))

Expected: I expect total_tags to be 3
Actual: I'm geting 5 instead
Environment: Django 5.2, PostgreSQL, ~1K orders, ~5K items

Following this format will help community members understand your problem quickly and provide targeted solutions; It may also be key to you solving your own problem!

It's also massively helpful if you present your problem through a DryORM snippet. This remains in the spirit of building an SSCCE to get help.

Remember: the easier you make it for others to help you, the faster you'll get good answers!