MySQL 4.1

MySQL 4.1 has greatly improved support for character sets. It is possible to set different default character sets on the database, table, and column. Previous versions have only a server-wide character set setting. It’s also the first version where the character set can be changed on the fly. 4.1 also has support for views, but Django currently doesn’t use views.

MySQL 5.0

MySQL 5.0 adds the information_schema database, which contains detailed data on all database schema. Django’s inspectdb feature uses this information_schema if it’s available. 5.0 also has support for stored procedures, but Django currently doesn’t use stored procedures.

Storage engines

MySQL has several storage engines (previously called table types). You can change the default storage engine in the server configuration.

The default engine is MyISAM. The main drawback of MyISAM is that it doesn’t currently support transactions or foreign keys. On the plus side, it’s currently the only engine that supports full-text indexing and searching.

The InnoDB engine is fully transactional and supports foreign key references.

The BDB engine, like InnoDB, is also fully transactional and supports foreign key references. However, its use seems to be deprecated.

Other storage engines, including SolidDB and Falcon, are on the horizon. For now, InnoDB is probably your best choice.

MySQLdb

MySQLdb is the Python interface to MySQL. 1.2.1 is the first version that has support for MySQL 4.1 and newer. If you are trying to use an older version of MySQL, then 1.2.0 might work for you.

Creating your database

You can create your database using the command-line tools and this SQL:

CREATE DATABASE <dbname> CHARACTER SET utf8;

This ensures all tables and columns will use UTF-8 by default.

Connecting to the database

Refer to the settings documentation.

Connection settings are used in this order:

1. DATABASE_OPTIONS
2. DATABASE_NAME, DATABASE_USER, DATABASE_PASSWORD, DATABASE_HOST, DATABASE_PORT
3. MySQL option files.

In other words, if you set the name of the database in DATABASE_OPTIONS, this will take precedence over DATABASE_NAME, which would override anything in a MySQL option file.

Here’s a sample configuration which uses a MySQL option file:

# settings.py
DATABASE_ENGINE = "mysql"
DATABASE_OPTIONS = {
    'read_default_file': '/path/to/my.cnf',
    }

# my.cnf
[client]
database = DATABASE_NAME
user = DATABASE_USER
passwd = DATABASE_PASSWORD
default-character-set = utf8

Several other MySQLdb connection options may be useful, such as ssl, use_unicode, init_command, and sql_mode. Consult the MySQLdb documentation for more details.

Creating your tables

When Django generates the schema, it doesn’t specify a storage engine, so tables will be created with whatever default storage engine your database server is configured for. The easiest solution is to set your database server’s default storage engine to the desired engine.

If you’re using a hosting service and can’t change your server’s default storage engine, you have a couple of options.

• After the tables are created, execute an ALTER TABLE statement to convert a table to a new storage engine (such as InnoDB):

  ALTER TABLE <tablename> ENGINE=INNODB;
  

  This can be tedious if you have a lot of tables.

• Another option is to use the init_command option for MySQLdb prior to creating your tables:

  DATABASE_OPTIONS = {
      # ...
     "init_command": "SET storage_engine=INNODB",
      # ...
  }
  

  This sets the default storage engine upon connecting to the database. After your tables have been created, you should remove this option.

• Another method for changing the storage engine is described in AlterModelOnSyncDB.