#27825: ORM Object constructor does not cast types of it's attributes when 
called
by reference
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
     Reporter:  Oleg Belousov        |                    Owner:  nobody
         Type:  Bug                  |                   Status:  new
    Component:  Database layer       |                  Version:  1.10
  (models, ORM)                      |
     Severity:  Normal               |               Resolution:
     Keywords:  ORM                  |             Triage Stage:
                                     |  Someday/Maybe
    Has patch:  0                    |      Needs documentation:  0
  Needs tests:  0                    |  Patch needs improvement:  0
Easy pickings:  0                    |                    UI/UX:  0
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------

Comment (by Josh Smeaton):

 The original wording of this post is confusing, because it *seems* to
 suggest that using `Model.objects.create(decimal_field=123.12)` will do
 the expected thing and type cast to a Decimal, but it does not.

 {{{
 class Costing(models.Model):
     cost = models.DecimalField(max_digits=20, decimal_places=2)
     rev = models.DecimalField(max_digits=20, decimal_places=2)
     ts = models.DateField(db_index=True)

 In [31]: c = Costing.objects.create(cost=Decimal('123.12'), rev=123.12,
 ts=datetime.now().date())

 In [32]: print(type(c.rev))
 <type 'float'>

 In [33]: c.rev
 Out[33]: 123.12
 }}}

 While this might look different to #24028 I think it is the same. In the
 linked ticket, the related field has been cached and isn't reloaded and
 brought through the various adapters and converters. Here, it's simply the
 local field that hasn't been reloaded and gone through various
 transformations.

 The only fix that will work for every field is to refetch it from the
 database, and rely on the adapters provided by the driver, plus the
 converters provided by the backend and fields, to cast the type correctly.
 That's a non-starter, because we'd need to do a SELECT for every INSERT or
 UPDATE, which harms performance for all the users handing the constructor
 correct data.

 You could argue that save could accept a flag to do an automatic fetch,
 but this wouldn't help you in your situation. It's unlikely that users
 would pass in such a flag just in case bad data got in - they'd only use
 it when they *know* they need to refresh from the database, like when
 using expressions to update attributes. At that point, using
 refresh_from_db is nearly as good.

 > Personally, this bug (one way binding between application and db on
 save) broke many of my tests and took a lot of my time.

 The first bug was in your own program. Handing a float to a decimal field
 is wrong. Let me show you a contrived example:

 {{{
 # Make the decimal field store a large decimal component

 class Costing(models.Model):
     cost = models.DecimalField(max_digits=20, decimal_places=2)
     rev = models.DecimalField(max_digits=30, decimal_places=18)
     ts = models.DateField(db_index=True)

 In [3]: c = Costing.objects.create(cost=Decimal('123.12'), rev=0.1 + 0.1 +
 0.1, ts=datetime.now().date())

 In [4]: c.refresh_from_db()

 In [5]: c.rev
 Out[5]: Decimal('0.300000000000000044')
 }}}

 That said, the behaviour of django models here is certainly surprising
 which is not a good thing. Decimal fields are among the worst culprits,
 because they'll silently accept and save wrong data. I'd be more inclined
 to accept a patch enforcing only decimals being assigned to decimal fields
 (or having the descriptor wrap any arguments in a `Decimal()`, which would
 be a breaking change for a lot of people, but would highlight a number of
 broken programs. Digressing a little, I'm also surprised the decimal type
 in python itself allows floats as arguments, because the same broken
 behaviour is possible there.

 > one way binding between application and db on save

 We need to make this clearer in our docs I think. Without doing a full
 refresh of the object, it's impossible to convert input to the eventual
 output for every field type.

--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/27825#comment:9>
Django <https://code.djangoproject.com/>
The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.

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