Django Deprecation Timeline

This document outlines when various pieces of Django will be removed or altered in a backward incompatible way, following their deprecation, as per the deprecation policy. More details about each item can often be found in the release notes of two versions prior.

1.9

See the Django 1.7 release notes for more details on these changes.

  • django.utils.dictconfig will be removed.
  • django.utils.importlib will be removed.
  • django.utils.tzinfo will be removed.
  • django.utils.unittest will be removed.
  • The syncdb command will be removed.
  • django.db.models.signals.pre_syncdb and django.db.models.signals.post_syncdb will be removed.
  • allow_syncdb on database routers will no longer automatically become allow_migrate.
  • The legacy method of syncing apps without migrations will be removed, and migrations will become compulsory for all apps. This includes automatic loading of initial_data fixtures and support for initial SQL data.
  • All models will need to be defined inside an installed application or declare an explicit app_label. Furthermore, it won’t be possible to import them before their application is loaded. In particular, it won’t be possible to import models inside the root package of their application.
  • If models are organized in a package, Django will no longer look for initial SQL data in myapp/models/sql/. Move your custom SQL files to myapp/sql/.
  • The model and form IPAddressField will be removed.
  • AppCommand.handle_app() will no longer be supported.
  • RequestSite will be located in django.contrib.sites.requests and get_current_site in django.contrib.sites.shortcuts.
  • FastCGI support via the runfcgi management command will be removed. Please deploy your project using WSGI.
  • django.utils.datastructures.SortedDict will be removed. Use collections.OrderedDict from the Python standard library instead.
  • ModelAdmin.declared_fieldsets will be removed.
  • Instances of util.py in the Django codebase have been renamed to utils.py in an effort to unify all util and utils references. The modules that provided backwards compatibility will be removed:
    • django.contrib.admin.util
    • django.contrib.gis.db.backends.util
    • django.db.backends.util
    • django.forms.util
  • ModelAdmin.get_formsets will be removed.
  • Remove the backward compatible shims introduced to rename the BaseMemcachedCache._get_memcache_timeout() method to get_backend_timeout().
  • The --natural and -n options for dumpdata will be removed. Use --natural-foreign instead.
  • The use_natural_keys argument for serializers.serialize() will be removed. Use use_natural_foreign_keys instead.
  • django.forms.get_declared_fields will be removed.
  • The ability to use a SplitDateTimeWidget with DateTimeField will be removed.
  • The WSGIRequest.REQUEST property will be removed.
  • The class django.utils.datastructures.MergeDict will be removed.
  • The zh-cn and zh-tw language codes will be removed and have been replaced by the zh-hans and zh-hant language code respectively.
  • The internal django.utils.functional.memoize will be removed.
  • django.core.cache.get_cache will be removed. Add suitable entries to CACHES and use django.core.cache.caches instead.
  • django.db.models.loading will be removed.
  • Passing callable arguments to querysets will no longer be possible.
  • BaseCommand.requires_model_validation will be removed in favor of requires_system_checks. Admin validators will be replaced by admin checks.
  • ModelAdmin.validator will be removed in favor of the new checks attribute.
  • django.db.backends.DatabaseValidation.validate_field will be removed in favor of the check_field method.
  • django.utils.module_loading.import_by_path will be removed in favor of django.utils.module_loading.import_string.
  • ssi and url template tags will be removed from the future template tag library (used during the 1.3/1.4 deprecation period).
  • django.utils.text.javascript_quote will be removed.
  • Database test settings as independent entries in the database settings, prefixed by TEST_, will no longer be supported.

1.8

See the Django 1.6 release notes for more details on these changes.

  • django.contrib.comments will be removed.

  • The following transaction management APIs will be removed:

    • TransactionMiddleware,
    • the decorators and context managers autocommit, commit_on_success, and commit_manually, defined in django.db.transaction,
    • the functions commit_unless_managed and rollback_unless_managed, also defined in django.db.transaction,
    • the TRANSACTIONS_MANAGED setting.

    Upgrade paths are described in the transaction management docs.

  • The cycle and firstof template tags will auto-escape their arguments. In 1.6 and 1.7, this behavior is provided by the version of these tags in the future template tag library.

  • The SEND_BROKEN_LINK_EMAILS setting will be removed. Add the django.middleware.common.BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware middleware to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting instead.

  • django.middleware.doc.XViewMiddleware will be removed. Use django.contrib.admindocs.middleware.XViewMiddleware instead.

  • Model._meta.module_name was renamed to model_name.

  • Remove the backward compatible shims introduced to rename get_query_set and similar queryset methods. This affects the following classes: BaseModelAdmin, ChangeList, BaseCommentNode, GenericForeignKey, Manager, SingleRelatedObjectDescriptor and ReverseSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor.

  • Remove the backward compatible shims introduced to rename the attributes ChangeList.root_query_set and ChangeList.query_set.

  • django.views.defaults.shortcut will be removed, as part of the goal of removing all django.contrib references from the core Django codebase. Instead use django.contrib.contenttypes.views.shortcut. django.conf.urls.shortcut will also be removed.

  • Support for the Python Imaging Library (PIL) module will be removed, as it no longer appears to be actively maintained & does not work on Python 3. You are advised to install Pillow, which should be used instead.

  • The following private APIs will be removed:

    • django.db.backend
    • django.db.close_connection()
    • django.db.backends.creation.BaseDatabaseCreation.set_autocommit()
    • django.db.transaction.is_managed()
    • django.db.transaction.managed()

  • django.forms.widgets.RadioInput will be removed in favor of django.forms.widgets.RadioChoiceInput.

  • The module django.test.simple and the class django.test.simple.DjangoTestSuiteRunner will be removed. Instead use django.test.runner.DiscoverRunner.

  • The module django.test._doctest will be removed. Instead use the doctest module from the Python standard library.

  • The CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_ANONYMOUS_ONLY setting will be removed.

  • Usage of the hard-coded Hold down “Control”, or “Command” on a Mac, to select more than one. string to override or append to user-provided help_text in forms for ManyToMany model fields will not be performed by Django anymore either at the model or forms layer.

  • The Model._meta.get_(add|change|delete)_permission methods will be removed.

  • The session key django_language will no longer be read for backwards compatibility.

  • Geographic Sitemaps will be removed (django.contrib.gis.sitemaps.views.index and django.contrib.gis.sitemaps.views.sitemap).

  • django.utils.html.fix_ampersands, the fix_ampersands template filter and django.utils.html.clean_html will be removed following an accelerated deprecation.

1.7

See the Django 1.5 release notes for more details on these changes.

  • The module django.utils.simplejson will be removed. The standard library provides json which should be used instead.
  • The function django.utils.itercompat.product will be removed. The Python builtin version should be used instead.
  • Auto-correction of INSTALLED_APPS and TEMPLATE_DIRS settings when they are specified as a plain string instead of a tuple will be removed and raise an exception.
  • The mimetype argument to the __init__ methods of HttpResponse, SimpleTemplateResponse, and TemplateResponse, will be removed. content_type should be used instead. This also applies to the render_to_response() shortcut and the sitemap views, index() and sitemap().
  • When HttpResponse is instantiated with an iterator, or when content is set to an iterator, that iterator will be immediately consumed.
  • The AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE setting, and the get_profile() method on the User model, will be removed.
  • The cleanup management command will be removed. It’s replaced by clearsessions.
  • The daily_cleanup.py script will be removed.
  • The depth keyword argument will be removed from select_related().
  • The undocumented get_warnings_state()/restore_warnings_state() functions from django.test.utils and the save_warnings_state()/ restore_warnings_state() django.test.*TestCase methods are deprecated. Use the warnings.catch_warnings context manager available starting with Python 2.6 instead.
  • The undocumented check_for_test_cookie method in AuthenticationForm will be removed following an accelerated deprecation. Users subclassing this form should remove calls to this method, and instead ensure that their auth related views are CSRF protected, which ensures that cookies are enabled.
  • The version of django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_confirm() that supports base36 encoded user IDs (django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_confirm_uidb36) will be removed. If your site has been running Django 1.6 for more than PASSWORD_RESET_TIMEOUT_DAYS, this change will have no effect. If not, then any password reset links generated before you upgrade to Django 1.7 won’t work after the upgrade.
  • The django.utils.encoding.StrAndUnicode mix-in will be removed. Define a __str__ method and apply the python_2_unicode_compatible() decorator instead.

1.6

See the Django 1.4 release notes for more details on these changes.

  • django.contrib.databrowse will be removed.
  • django.contrib.localflavor will be removed following an accelerated deprecation.
  • django.contrib.markup will be removed following an accelerated deprecation.
  • The compatibility modules django.utils.copycompat and django.utils.hashcompat as well as the functions django.utils.itercompat.all and django.utils.itercompat.any will be removed. The Python builtin versions should be used instead.
  • The csrf_response_exempt and csrf_view_exempt decorators will be removed. Since 1.4 csrf_response_exempt has been a no-op (it returns the same function), and csrf_view_exempt has been a synonym for django.views.decorators.csrf.csrf_exempt, which should be used to replace it.
  • The django.core.cache.backends.memcached.CacheClass backend was split into two in Django 1.3 in order to introduce support for PyLibMC. The historical CacheClass will be removed in favor of django.core.cache.backends.memcached.MemcachedCache.
  • The UK-prefixed objects of django.contrib.localflavor.uk will only be accessible through their GB-prefixed names (GB is the correct ISO 3166 code for United Kingdom).
  • The IGNORABLE_404_STARTS and IGNORABLE_404_ENDS settings have been superseded by IGNORABLE_404_URLS in the 1.4 release. They will be removed.
  • The form wizard has been refactored to use class-based views with pluggable backends in 1.4. The previous implementation will be removed.
  • Legacy ways of calling cache_page() will be removed.
  • The backward-compatibility shim to automatically add a debug-false filter to the 'mail_admins' logging handler will be removed. The LOGGING setting should include this filter explicitly if it is desired.
  • The builtin truncation functions django.utils.text.truncate_words() and django.utils.text.truncate_html_words() will be removed in favor of the django.utils.text.Truncator class.
  • The GeoIP class was moved to django.contrib.gis.geoip in 1.4 – the shortcut in django.contrib.gis.utils will be removed.
  • django.conf.urls.defaults will be removed. The functions include(), patterns() and url() plus handler404, handler500, are now available through django.conf.urls .
  • The functions setup_environ() and execute_manager() will be removed from django.core.management. This also means that the old (pre-1.4) style of manage.py file will no longer work.
  • Setting the is_safe and needs_autoescape flags as attributes of template filter functions will no longer be supported.
  • The attribute HttpRequest.raw_post_data was renamed to HttpRequest.body in 1.4. The backward compatibility will be removed – HttpRequest.raw_post_data will no longer work.
  • The value for the post_url_continue parameter in ModelAdmin.response_add() will have to be either None (to redirect to the newly created object’s edit page) or a pre-formatted url. String formats, such as the previous default '../%s/', will not be accepted any more.

1.5

See the Django 1.3 release notes for more details on these changes.

  • Starting Django without a SECRET_KEY will result in an exception rather than a DeprecationWarning. (This is accelerated from the usual deprecation path; see the Django 1.4 release notes.)
  • The mod_python request handler will be removed. The mod_wsgi handler should be used instead.
  • The template attribute on django.test.client.Response objects returned by the test client will be removed. The templates attribute should be used instead.
  • The django.test.simple.DjangoTestRunner will be removed. Instead use a unittest-native class. The features of the django.test.simple.DjangoTestRunner (including fail-fast and Ctrl-C test termination) can currently be provided by the unittest-native TextTestRunner.
  • The undocumented function django.contrib.formtools.utils.security_hash will be removed, instead use django.contrib.formtools.utils.form_hmac
  • The function-based generic view modules will be removed in favor of their class-based equivalents, outlined here.
  • The django.core.servers.basehttp.AdminMediaHandler will be removed. In its place use django.contrib.staticfiles.handlers.StaticFilesHandler.
  • The template tags library adminmedia and the template tag {% admin_media_prefix %} will be removed in favor of the generic static files handling. (This is faster than the usual deprecation path; see the Django 1.4 release notes.)
  • The url and ssi template tags will be modified so that the first argument to each tag is a template variable, not an implied string. In 1.4, this behavior is provided by a version of the tag in the future template tag library.
  • The reset and sqlreset management commands will be removed.
  • Authentication backends will need to support an inactive user being passed to all methods dealing with permissions. The supports_inactive_user attribute will no longer be checked and can be removed from custom backends.
  • transform() will raise a GEOSException when called on a geometry with no SRID value.
  • django.http.CompatCookie will be removed in favor of django.http.SimpleCookie.
  • django.core.context_processors.PermWrapper and django.core.context_processors.PermLookupDict will be removed in favor of the corresponding django.contrib.auth.context_processors.PermWrapper and django.contrib.auth.context_processors.PermLookupDict, respectively.
  • The MEDIA_URL or STATIC_URL settings will be required to end with a trailing slash to ensure there is a consistent way to combine paths in templates.
  • django.db.models.fields.URLField.verify_exists will be removed. The feature was deprecated in 1.3.1 due to intractable security and performance issues and will follow a slightly accelerated deprecation timeframe.
  • Translations located under the so-called project path will be ignored during the translation building process performed at runtime. The LOCALE_PATHS setting can be used for the same task by including the filesystem path to a locale directory containing non-app-specific translations in its value.
  • The Markup contrib app will no longer support versions of Python-Markdown library earlier than 2.1. An accelerated timeline was used as this was a security related deprecation.
  • The CACHE_BACKEND setting will be removed. The cache backend(s) should be specified in the CACHES setting.

1.4

See the Django 1.2 release notes for more details on these changes.

  • CsrfResponseMiddleware and CsrfMiddleware will be removed. Use the {% csrf_token %} template tag inside forms to enable CSRF protection. CsrfViewMiddleware remains and is enabled by default.
  • The old imports for CSRF functionality (django.contrib.csrf.*), which moved to core in 1.2, will be removed.
  • The django.contrib.gis.db.backend module will be removed in favor of the specific backends.
  • SMTPConnection will be removed in favor of a generic Email backend API.
  • The many to many SQL generation functions on the database backends will be removed.
  • The ability to use the DATABASE_* family of top-level settings to define database connections will be removed.
  • The ability to use shorthand notation to specify a database backend (i.e., sqlite3 instead of django.db.backends.sqlite3) will be removed.
  • The get_db_prep_save, get_db_prep_value and get_db_prep_lookup methods will have to support multiple databases.
  • The Message model (in django.contrib.auth), its related manager in the User model (user.message_set), and the associated methods (user.message_set.create() and user.get_and_delete_messages()), will be removed. The messages framework should be used instead. The related messages variable returned by the auth context processor will also be removed. Note that this means that the admin application will depend on the messages context processor.
  • Authentication backends will need to support the obj parameter for permission checking. The supports_object_permissions attribute will no longer be checked and can be removed from custom backends.
  • Authentication backends will need to support the AnonymousUser class being passed to all methods dealing with permissions. The supports_anonymous_user variable will no longer be checked and can be removed from custom backends.
  • The ability to specify a callable template loader rather than a Loader class will be removed, as will the load_template_source functions that are included with the built in template loaders for backwards compatibility.
  • django.utils.translation.get_date_formats() and django.utils.translation.get_partial_date_formats(). These functions will be removed; use the locale-aware django.utils.formats.get_format() to get the appropriate formats.
  • In django.forms.fields, the constants: DEFAULT_DATE_INPUT_FORMATS, DEFAULT_TIME_INPUT_FORMATS and DEFAULT_DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS will be removed. Use django.utils.formats.get_format() to get the appropriate formats.
  • The ability to use a function-based test runner will be removed, along with the django.test.simple.run_tests() test runner.
  • The views.feed() view and feeds.Feed class in django.contrib.syndication will be removed. The class-based view views.Feed should be used instead.
  • django.core.context_processors.auth. This release will remove the old method in favor of the new method in django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth.
  • The postgresql database backend will be removed, use the postgresql_psycopg2 backend instead.
  • The no language code will be removed and has been replaced by the nb language code.
  • Authentication backends will need to define the boolean attribute supports_inactive_user until version 1.5 when it will be assumed that all backends will handle inactive users.
  • django.db.models.fields.XMLField will be removed. This was deprecated as part of the 1.3 release. An accelerated deprecation schedule has been used because the field hasn’t performed any role beyond that of a simple TextField since the removal of oldforms. All uses of XMLField can be replaced with TextField.
  • The undocumented mixin parameter to the open() method of django.core.files.storage.Storage (and subclasses) will be removed.

1.3

See the Django 1.1 release notes for more details on these changes.

  • AdminSite.root(). This method of hooking up the admin URLs will be removed in favor of including admin.site.urls.
  • Authentication backends need to define the boolean attributes supports_object_permissions and supports_anonymous_user until version 1.4, at which point it will be assumed that all backends will support these options.
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