Model Meta Options

What Is the Meta Class?

Meta is a small class you nest inside a model to configure things about the model itself, separate from its fields.

Example: What Is the Meta Class?

The Meta class here tells Django to always sort Chapter querysets by the order field unless order_by() overrides it.

from django.db import models

class Chapter(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    order = models.IntegerField()

    class Meta:
        ordering = ['order']

Setting a Default Ordering

The ordering option is a list of field names that becomes the default sort order for every queryset on that model.

Note: Prefix a field with - to sort that field descending by default.

Example: Setting a Default Ordering

Now Tutorial.objects.all() automatically returns rows sorted by order, without needing order_by(order) every time.

class Tutorial(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    order = models.IntegerField()

    class Meta:
        ordering = ['order']

Enforcing Uniqueness with unique_together

unique_together makes sure a combination of fields never repeats across rows, even if each field alone could repeat.

Example: Enforcing Uniqueness with unique_together

This allows the same slug to be reused across different languages, but never twice within the same language.

class Tutorial(models.Model):
    language_id = models.IntegerField()
    slug = models.SlugField()

    class Meta:
        unique_together = ('language_id', 'slug')