Unicode SlugField design decision (#16501)

[Tim Graham]

I wanted to solicit feedback on the two approaches to supporting unicode in SlugField:

1. Added a unicode argument to models.SlugField and forms.SlugField.
https://github.com/django/django/pull/1979

2. Added models.UnicodeSlugField and forms.UnicodeSlugField.
https://github.com/django/django/pull/1987

The patch author says, "On one hand, I like the new field approach because it gives us an easier upgrade path. On the other hand, it feels like I'm polluting django.db.models and django.forms with slightly different versions of something that's already there."

Approach 1 does seem cleaner to me, but I'd be interested in hearing from those interested in this feature.

Ticket: https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/16501

[Michael Manfre]

Should the unicode validated field (either options) have a different internal type for the sake of 3rd party database backends? I'm not sure if any currently store SlugFIeld in an ascii char datatype and would need an easy way to differentiate.

Regards,

Michael Manfre

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[Marc Tamlyn]

It feels to me more like an option to SlugField and I feel UnicodeSlugField is a bit ugly. If however we find an example where Michael's point is valid (an external 3rd party backend which uses ascii chars for SlugField now) then we should go with that.

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[Michael Manfre]

We can change the internal type of SlugField for option 1 based upon whether or not the field should be unicode. Whether or not an existing backend stores SlugField in an ascii char datatype shouldn't dictate whether we go with SlugField(unicode=True) or UnicodeSlugField(). Let me rephrase the question as, Do we want to provide backends enough information so that they can decide to store an ascii slug field in an ascii char field (e.g. varchar) and a unicode slug field in a unicode char field (e.g nvarchar)?

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[Shai Berger]

On Wednesday 05 November 2014 17:29:20 Michael Manfre wrote:
> We can change the internal type of SlugField for option 1 based upon
> whether or not the field should be unicode. Whether or not an existing
> backend stores SlugField in an ascii char datatype shouldn't dictate
> whether we go with SlugField(unicode=True) or UnicodeSlugField(). Let me
> rephrase the question as, Do we want to provide backends enough information
> so that they can decide to store an ascii slug field in an ascii char field
> (e.g. varchar) and a unicode slug field in a unicode char field (e.g
> nvarchar)?
>

Could you please clarify the question? As far as I understand, schema editors
get all the information anyway.

Shai.

[Michael Manfre]

Constructing the schema is only one part of the process. The main bit I am concerned about is how the ORM will translate the data. There are several methods on DatabaseOperatoins that exist to act based upon a field's internal type string. E.g. get_db_converters, field_cast_sql.

[Marc Tamlyn]

Even if the backend is storing using an ascii backed data type, it should still return unicode data to Django anyway, so I'm not sure there would be a difference.

Marc

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