ManyToManyField('self') not using related_name

[Farhan Khan]

I am using a ManyToManyField whose target is a 'self' reference, but it does not create a related_name "reverse" field.

Here is my model:

class SecurityGroup(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    description = models.TextField()
    subgroups = models.ManyToManyField('self', related_name='origin')

    def __str__(self):

        return self.name

And here is the problem:

>>> x = SecurityGroup(name='name', description='description')
>>> x.save()
>>> x.origin()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'SecurityGroup' object has no attribute 'origin'

There also no x.securitygroup_set. Is this a bug?

[Farhan Khan]

The solution was that I needed to set symmetrical=False, per the documentation here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/ref/models/fields/#django.db.models.ManyToManyField.symmetrical