Django - How to rename a model field using South?

You can use the db.rename_column function.

class Migration:    def forwards(self, orm):        # Rename 'name' field to 'full_name'        db.rename_column('app_foo', 'name', 'full_name')    def backwards(self, orm):        # Rename 'full_name' field to 'name'        db.rename_column('app_foo', 'full_name', 'name')

The first argument of db.rename_column is the table name, so it's important to remember how Django creates table names:

Django automatically derives the name of the database table from the name of your model class and the app that contains it. A model's database table name is constructed by joining the model's "app label" -- the name you used in manage.py startapp -- to the model's class name, with an underscore between them.

In the case where you have a multi-worded, camel-cased model name, such as ProjectItem, the table name will be app_projectitem (i.e., an underscore will not be inserted between project and item even though they are camel-cased).

Here's what I do:

1. Make the column name change in your model (in this example it would be myapp/models.py)
2. Run ./manage.py schemamigration myapp renaming_column_x --auto

Note renaming_column_x can be anything you like, it's just a way of giving a descriptive name to the migration file.

This will generate you a file called myapp/migrations/000x_renaming_column_x.py which will delete your old column and add a new column.

Modify the code in this file to change the migration behaviour to a simple rename:

class Migration(SchemaMigration):    def forwards(self, orm):        # Renaming column 'mymodel.old_column_name' to 'mymodel.new_column_name'        db.rename_column(u'myapp_mymodel', 'old_column_name', 'new_column_name')    def backwards(self, orm):        # Renaming column 'mymodel.new_column_name' to 'mymodel.old_column_name'        db.rename_column(u'myapp_mymodel', 'new_column_name', 'old_column_name')

I didn't know about db.rename column, sounds handy, however in the past I have added the new column as one schemamigration, then created a datamigration to move values into the new field, then a second schemamigration to remove the old column