Django 3.0 release notes¶
December 2, 2019
Welcome to Django 3.0!
These release notes cover thenew features, as well assomebackwards incompatible changes you’llwant to be aware of when upgrading from Django 2.2 or earlier. We’vedropped some features that have reached the end oftheir deprecation cycle, and we’vebegun the deprecation process forsome features.
See theHow to upgrade Django to a newer version guide if you’re updating an existingproject.
Python compatibility¶
Django 3.0 supports Python 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, and 3.9 (as of 3.0.11). Wehighlyrecommend and only officially support the latest release of each series.
The Django 2.2.x series is the last to support Python 3.5.
Third-party library support for older version of Django¶
Following the release of Django 3.0, we suggest that third-party app authorsdrop support for all versions of Django prior to 2.2. At that time, you shouldbe able to run your package’s tests usingpython-Wd so that deprecationwarnings appear. After making the deprecation warning fixes, your app should becompatible with Django 3.0.
What’s new in Django 3.0¶
MariaDB support¶
Django now officially supportsMariaDB 10.1 andhigher. SeeMariaDB notes for more details.
ASGI support¶
Django 3.0 begins our journey to making Django fully async-capable by providingsupport for running as anASGI application.
This is in addition to our existing WSGI support. Django intends to supportboth for the foreseeable future. Async features will only be available toapplications that run under ASGI, however.
At this stage async support only applies to the outer ASGI application.Internally everything remains synchronous. Asynchronous middleware, views, etc.are not yet supported. You can, however, use ASGI middleware around Django’sapplication, allowing you to combine Django with other ASGI frameworks.
There is no need to switch your applications over unless you want to startexperimenting with asynchronous code, but we havedocumentation on deploying with ASGI ifyou want to learn more.
Note that as a side-effect of this change, Django is now aware of asynchronousevent loops and will block you calling code marked as “async unsafe” - such asORM operations - from an asynchronous context. If you were using Django fromasync code before, this may trigger if you were doing it incorrectly. If yousee aSynchronousOnlyOperation error, then closely examine your code andmove any database operations to be in a synchronous child thread.
Exclusion constraints on PostgreSQL¶
The newExclusionConstraint classenable adding exclusion constraints on PostgreSQL. Constraints are added tomodels using theMeta.constraints option.
Filter expressions¶
Expressions that outputBooleanField may now beused directly inQuerySet filters, without having to first annotate andthen filter against the annotation.
Enumerations for model field choices¶
Custom enumeration typesTextChoices,IntegerChoices, andChoicesare now available as a way to defineField.choices.TextChoicesandIntegerChoices types are provided for text and integer fields. TheChoices class allows defining a compatible enumeration for other concretedata types. These custom enumeration types support human-readable labels thatcan be translated and accessed via a property on the enumeration or itsmembers. SeeEnumeration types for moredetails and examples.
Minor features¶
django.contrib.admin¶
- Added support for the
admin_order_fieldattribute on properties inModelAdmin.list_display. - The new
ModelAdmin.get_inlines()method allows specifying theinlines based on the request or model instance. - Select2 library is upgraded from version 4.0.3 to 4.0.7.
- jQuery is upgraded from version 3.3.1 to 3.4.1.
django.contrib.auth¶
- The new
reset_url_tokenattribute inPasswordResetConfirmViewallowsspecifying a token parameter displayed as a component of password resetURLs. - Added
BaseBackendclass to easecustomization of authentication backends. - Added
get_user_permissions()methodto mirror the existingget_group_permissions()method. - Added HTML
autocompleteattribute to widgets of username, email, andpassword fields indjango.contrib.auth.formsfor better interactionwith browser password managers. createsuperusernow falls back to environment variables forpassword and required fields, when a corresponding command line argumentisn’t provided in non-interactive mode.REQUIRED_FIELDSnow supportsManyToManyFields.- The new
UserManager.with_perm()method returns users that have thespecified permission. - The default iteration count for the PBKDF2 password hasher is increased from150,000 to 180,000.
django.contrib.gis¶
- Allowed MySQL spatial lookup functions to operate on real geometries.Previous support was limited to bounding boxes.
- Added the
GeometryDistancefunction, supported on PostGIS. - Added support for the
furlongunit inDistance. - The
GEOIP_PATHsetting now supportspathlib.Path. - The
GeoIP2class now acceptspathlib.Pathpath.
django.contrib.postgres¶
- The new
RangeOperatorshelps toavoid typos in SQL operators that can be used together withRangeField. - The new
RangeBoundaryexpressionrepresents the range boundaries. - The new
AddIndexConcurrentlyandRemoveIndexConcurrentlyclasses allow creating and dropping indexesCONCURRENTLYon PostgreSQL.
django.contrib.sessions¶
- The new
get_session_cookie_age()method allows dynamically specifying the session cookie age.
django.contrib.syndication¶
- Added the
languageclass attribute to thedjango.contrib.syndication.views.Feedto customize a feed language.The default value isget_language()insteadofLANGUAGE_CODE.
Cache¶
add_never_cache_headers()andnever_cache()now add theprivatedirective toCache-Controlheaders.
File Storage¶
- The new
Storage.get_alternative_name()method allows customizing thealgorithm for generating filenames if a file with the uploaded name alreadyexists.
Forms¶
- Formsets may control the widget used when ordering forms via
can_orderby setting theordering_widgetattribute oroverridingget_ordering_widget().
Internationalization¶
- Added the
LANGUAGE_COOKIE_HTTPONLY,LANGUAGE_COOKIE_SAMESITE, andLANGUAGE_COOKIE_SECUREsettings to set theHttpOnly,SameSite, andSecureflags onlanguage cookies. The default values of these settings preserve the previousbehavior. - Added support and translations for the Uzbek language.
Logging¶
- The new
reporter_classparameter ofAdminEmailHandlerallows providing andjango.views.debug.ExceptionReportersubclass to customize the tracebacktext sent to siteADMINSwhenDEBUGisFalse.
Management Commands¶
- The new
compilemessages--ignoreoption allows ignoring specificdirectories when searching for.pofiles to compile. showmigrations--listnow shows the applied datetimes when--verbosityis 2 and above.- On PostgreSQL,
dbshellnow supports client-side TLS certificates. inspectdbnow introspectsOneToOneFieldwhen a foreign key has a unique or primary key constraint.- The new
--skip-checksoption skips running system checks prior torunning the command. - The
startapp--templateandstartproject--templateoptions now support templates stored in XZ archives (.tar.xz,.txz)and LZMA archives (.tar.lzma,.tlz).
Models¶
Added hash database functions
MD5,SHA1,SHA224,SHA256,SHA384, andSHA512.Added the
Signdatabase function.The new
is_dstparameter of theTruncdatabase functions determines thetreatment of nonexistent and ambiguous datetimes.connection.queriesnow showsCOPY…TOstatements on PostgreSQL.FilePathFieldnow accepts a callable forpath.Allowed symmetrical intermediate table for self-referential
ManyToManyField.The
nameattributes ofCheckConstraint,UniqueConstraint, andIndexnow support app label and classinterpolation using the'%(app_label)s'and'%(class)s'placeholders.The new
Field.descriptor_classattribute allows model fields tocustomize the get and set behavior by overriding theirdescriptors.Added
SmallAutoFieldwhich acts much like anAutoFieldexcept that it only allows values undera certain (database-dependent) limit. Values from1to32767are safein all databases supported by Django.AutoField,BigAutoField, andSmallAutoFieldnow inherit fromIntegerField,BigIntegerFieldandSmallIntegerFieldrespectively.System checks and validators are now also properly inherited.FileField.upload_tonow supportspathlib.Path.CheckConstraintis now supported on MySQL 8.0.16+.The new
allows_group_by_selected_pks_on_model()method ofdjango.db.backends.base.BaseDatabaseFeaturesallows optimization ofGROUPBYclauses to require only the selected models’ primary keys. Bydefault, it’s supported only for managed models on PostgreSQL.To enable the
GROUPBYprimary key-only optimization for unmanagedmodels, you have to subclass the PostgreSQL database engine, overriding thefeatures classallows_group_by_selected_pks_on_model()method as yourequire. SeeSubclassing the built-in database backends for an example.
Requests and Responses¶
- Allowed
HttpResponseto be initialized withmemoryviewcontent. - For use in, for example, Django templates,
HttpRequest.headersnowallows lookups using underscores (e.g.user_agent) in place of hyphens.
Security¶
X_FRAME_OPTIONSnow defaults to'DENY'. In older versions, theX_FRAME_OPTIONSsetting defaults to'SAMEORIGIN'. If your siteuses frames of itself, you will need to explicitly setX_FRAME_OPTIONS='SAMEORIGIN'for them to continue working.SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFFnow defaults toTrue. With thisenabled,SecurityMiddlewaresets theX-Content-Type-Options: nosniff header on all responses that do not alreadyhave it.SecurityMiddlewarecan now send theReferrer-Policy header.
Tests¶
- The new test
Clientargumentraise_request_exceptionallows controlling whether or not exceptionsraised during the request should also be raised in the test. The valuedefaults toTruefor backwards compatibility. If it isFalseand anexception occurs, the test client will return a 500 response with theattributeexc_info, a tuple providinginformation of the exception that occurred. - Tests and test cases to run can be selected by test name pattern using thenew
test-koption. - HTML comparison, as used by
assertHTMLEqual(), now treats text, characterreferences, and entity references that refer to the same character asequivalent. - Django test runner now supports headless mode for selenium tests on supportedbrowsers. Add the
--headlessoption to enable this mode. - Django test runner now supports
--start-atand--start-afteroptionsto run tests starting from a specific top-level module. - Django test runner now supports a
--pdboption to spawn a debugger ateach error or failure.
Backwards incompatible changes in 3.0¶
Model.save() when providing a default for the primary key¶
Model.save() no longer attempts to find a row when saving a newModel instance and a default value for the primary key is provided, andalways performs a singleINSERT query. In older Django versions,Model.save() performed either anINSERT or anUPDATE based onwhether or not the row exists.
This makes callingModel.save() while providing a default primary key valueequivalent to passingforce_insert=True tomodel’ssave(). Attempts to use a newModel instance to update anexisting row will result in anIntegrityError.
In order to update an existing model for a specific primary key value, use theupdate_or_create() method orQuerySet.filter(pk=…).update(…) instead. For example:
>>>MyModel.objects.update_or_create(pk=existing_pk,defaults={'name':'new name'})>>>MyModel.objects.filter(pk=existing_pk).update(name='new name')
Database backend API¶
This section describes changes that may be needed in third-party databasebackends.
- The second argument of
DatabaseIntrospection.get_geometry_type()is nowthe row description instead of the column name. DatabaseIntrospection.get_field_type()may no longer return tuples.- If the database can create foreign keys in the same SQL statement that adds afield, add
SchemaEditor.sql_create_column_inline_fkwith the appropriateSQL; otherwise, setDatabaseFeatures.can_create_inline_fk=False. DatabaseFeatures.can_return_id_from_insertandcan_return_ids_from_bulk_insertare renamed tocan_return_columns_from_insertandcan_return_rows_from_bulk_insert.- Database functions now handle
datetime.timezoneformats when createdusingdatetime.timedeltainstances (e.g.timezone(timedelta(hours=5)), which would output'UTC+05:00').Third-party backends should handle this format when preparingDateTimeFieldindatetime_cast_date_sql(),datetime_extract_sql(), etc. - Entries for
AutoField,BigAutoField, andSmallAutoFieldare addedtoDatabaseOperations.integer_field_rangesto support the integer rangevalidators on these field types. Third-party backends may need to customizethe default entries. DatabaseOperations.fetch_returned_insert_id()is replaced byfetch_returned_insert_columns()which returns a list of values returnedby theINSERT…RETURNINGstatement, instead of a single value.DatabaseOperations.return_insert_id()is replaced byreturn_insert_columns()that accepts afieldsargument, which is an iterable of fields to be returned after insert. Usuallythis is only the auto-generated primary key.
django.contrib.admin¶
- Admin’s model history change messages now prefers more readable field labelsinstead of field names.
django.contrib.gis¶
- Support for PostGIS 2.1 is removed.
- Support for SpatiaLite 4.1 and 4.2 is removed.
- Support for GDAL 1.11 and GEOS 3.4 is removed.
Dropped support for PostgreSQL 9.4¶
Upstream support for PostgreSQL 9.4 ends in December 2019. Django 3.0 supportsPostgreSQL 9.5 and higher.
Dropped support for Oracle 12.1¶
Upstream support for Oracle 12.1 ends in July 2021. Django 2.2 will besupported until April 2022. Django 3.0 officially supports Oracle 12.2 and 18c.
Removed private Python 2 compatibility APIs¶
While Python 2 support was removed in Django 2.0, some private APIs weren’tremoved from Django so that third party apps could continue using them untilthe Python 2 end-of-life.
Since we expect apps to drop Python 2 compatibility when adding support forDjango 3.0, we’re removing these APIs at this time.
django.test.utils.str_prefix()- Strings don’t have ‘u’ prefixes inPython 3.django.test.utils.patch_logger()- Useunittest.TestCase.assertLogs()instead.django.utils.lru_cache.lru_cache()- Alias offunctools.lru_cache().django.utils.decorators.available_attrs()- This function returnsfunctools.WRAPPER_ASSIGNMENTS.django.utils.decorators.ContextDecorator- Alias ofcontextlib.ContextDecorator.django.utils._os.abspathu()- Alias ofos.path.abspath().django.utils._os.upath()andnpath()- These functions do nothing onPython 3.django.utils.six- Remove usage of this vendored library or switch tosix.django.utils.encoding.python_2_unicode_compatible()- Alias ofsix.python_2_unicode_compatible().django.utils.functional.curry()- Usefunctools.partial()orfunctools.partialmethod. See5b1c389603a353625ae1603ba345147356336afb.django.utils.safestring.SafeBytes- Unused since Django 2.0.
New default value for theFILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS setting¶
In older versions, theFILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS setting defaults toNone. With the defaultFILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS, this results inuploaded files having different permissions depending on their size and whichupload handler is used.
FILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS now defaults to0o644 to avoid thisinconsistency.
New default values for security settings¶
To make Django projects more secure by default, some security settings now havemore secure default values:
X_FRAME_OPTIONSnow defaults to'DENY'.SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFFnow defaults toTrue.
See theWhat’s NewSecurity section above formore details on these changes.
Miscellaneous¶
ContentType.__str__()now includes the model’sapp_labeltodisambiguate models with the same name in different apps.- Because accessing the language in the session rather than in the cookie isdeprecated,
LocaleMiddlewareno longer looks for the user’s language inthe session anddjango.contrib.auth.logout()no longer preserves thesession’s language after logout. django.utils.html.escape()now useshtml.escape()to escape HTML.This converts'to'instead of the previous equivalent decimalcode'.- The
django-admintest-koption now works as theunittest-koption rather than as a shortcut for--keepdb. - Support for
pywatchman< 1.2.0 is removed. urlencode()now encodes iterable values as they arewhendoseq=False, rather than iterating them, bringing it into line withthe standard libraryurllib.parse.urlencode()function.intwordtemplate filter now translates1.0as a singular phrase andall other numeric values as plural. This may be incorrect for some languages.- Assigning a value to a model’s
ForeignKeyorOneToOneField'_id'attribute now unsets thecorresponding field. Accessing the field afterward will result in a query. patch_vary_headers()now handles an asterisk'*'according toRFC 7231#section-7.1.4, i.e. if a list of headerfield names contains an asterisk, then theVaryheader will consist of asingle asterisk'*'.- On MySQL 8.0.16+,
PositiveIntegerFieldandPositiveSmallIntegerFieldnow include a check constraint to prevent negative values in the database. alias=Noneis added to the signature ofExpression.get_group_by_cols().RegexPattern, used byre_path(), no longer returnskeyword arguments withNonevalues to be passed to the view for theoptional named groups that are missing.
Features deprecated in 3.0¶
django.utils.encoding.force_text() andsmart_text()¶
Thesmart_text() andforce_text() aliases (since Django 2.0) ofsmart_str() andforce_str() are deprecated. Ignore this deprecation ifyour code supports Python 2 as the behavior ofsmart_str() andforce_str() is different there.
Miscellaneous¶
django.utils.http.urlquote(),urlquote_plus(),urlunquote(), andurlunquote_plus()are deprecated in favor of the functions that they’realiases for:urllib.parse.quote(),quote_plus(),unquote(), andunquote_plus().django.utils.translation.ugettext(),ugettext_lazy(),ugettext_noop(),ungettext(), andungettext_lazy()are deprecatedin favor of the functions that they’re aliases for:django.utils.translation.gettext(),gettext_lazy(),gettext_noop(),ngettext(), andngettext_lazy().- To limit creation of sessions and hence favor some caching strategies,
django.views.i18n.set_language()will stop setting the user’s languagein the session in Django 4.0. Since Django 2.1, the language is always storedin theLANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAMEcookie. django.utils.text.unescape_entities()is deprecated in favor ofhtml.unescape(). Note that unlikeunescape_entities(),html.unescape()evaluates lazy strings immediately.- To avoid possible confusion as to effective scope, the private internalutility
is_safe_url()is renamed tourl_has_allowed_host_and_scheme(). That a URL has an allowed host andscheme doesn’t in general imply that it’s “safe”. It may still be quotedincorrectly, for example. Ensure to also useiri_to_uri()on the path component of untrustedURLs.
Features removed in 3.0¶
These features have reached the end of their deprecation cycle and are removedin Django 3.0.
SeeFeatures deprecated in 2.0 for details on these changes, including howto remove usage of these features.
- The
django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2module is removed. django.shortcuts.render_to_response()is removed.- The
DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPEsetting is removed. HttpRequest.xreadlines()is removed.- Support for the
contextargument ofField.from_db_value()andExpression.convert_value()is removed. - The
field_namekeyword argument ofQuerySet.earliest()andlatest()is removed.
SeeFeatures deprecated in 2.1 for details on these changes, including howto remove usage of these features.
- The
ForceRHRGIS function is removed. django.utils.http.cookie_date()is removed.- The
staticfilesandadmin_statictemplate tag libraries are removed. django.contrib.staticfiles.templatetags.staticfiles.static()is removed.


