Django Deprecation Timeline

This document outlines when various pieces of Django will be removed or altered in a backward incompatible way, following their deprecation, as per the deprecation policy. More details about each item can often be found in the release notes of two versions prior.

1.6

See the Django 1.4 release notes for more details on these changes.

  • django.contrib.databrowse will be removed.
  • django.contrib.localflavor will be removed following an accelerated deprecation.
  • django.contrib.markup will be removed following an accelerated deprecation.
  • The compatibility modules django.utils.copycompat and django.utils.hashcompat as well as the functions django.utils.itercompat.all and django.utils.itercompat.any will be removed. The Python builtin versions should be used instead.
  • The csrf_response_exempt and csrf_view_exempt decorators will be removed. Since 1.4 csrf_response_exempt has been a no-op (it returns the same function), and csrf_view_exempt has been a synonym for django.views.decorators.csrf.csrf_exempt, which should be used to replace it.
  • The django.core.cache.backends.memcached.CacheClass backend was split into two in Django 1.3 in order to introduce support for PyLibMC. The historical CacheClass will be removed in favor of django.core.cache.backends.memcached.MemcachedCache.
  • The UK-prefixed objects of django.contrib.localflavor.uk will only be accessible through their GB-prefixed names (GB is the correct ISO 3166 code for United Kingdom).
  • The IGNORABLE_404_STARTS and IGNORABLE_404_ENDS settings have been superseded by IGNORABLE_404_URLS in the 1.4 release. They will be removed.
  • The form wizard has been refactored to use class-based views with pluggable backends in 1.4. The previous implementation will be removed.
  • Legacy ways of calling cache_page() will be removed.
  • The backward-compatibility shim to automatically add a debug-false filter to the 'mail_admins' logging handler will be removed. The LOGGING setting should include this filter explicitly if it is desired.
  • The builtin truncation functions django.utils.text.truncate_words() and django.utils.text.truncate_html_words() will be removed in favor of the django.utils.text.Truncator class.
  • The GeoIP class was moved to django.contrib.gis.geoip in 1.4 – the shortcut in django.contrib.gis.utils will be removed.
  • django.conf.urls.defaults will be removed. The functions include(), patterns() and url() plus handler404, handler500, are now available through django.conf.urls .
  • The functions setup_environ() and execute_manager() will be removed from django.core.management. This also means that the old (pre-1.4) style of manage.py file will no longer work.
  • Setting the is_safe and needs_autoescape flags as attributes of template filter functions will no longer be supported.
  • The attribute HttpRequest.raw_post_data was renamed to HttpRequest.body in 1.4. The backward compatibility will be removed – HttpRequest.raw_post_data will no longer work.
  • The value for the post_url_continue parameter in ModelAdmin.response_add() will have to be either None (to redirect to the newly created object’s edit page) or a pre-formatted url. String formats, such as the previous default '../%s/', will not be accepted any more.

1.7

See the Django 1.5 release notes for more details on these changes.

  • The module django.utils.simplejson will be removed. The standard library provides json which should be used instead.
  • The function django.utils.itercompat.product will be removed. The Python builtin version should be used instead.
  • Auto-correction of INSTALLED_APPS and TEMPLATE_DIRS settings when they are specified as a plain string instead of a tuple will be removed and raise an exception.
  • The mimetype argument to the __init__ methods of HttpResponse, SimpleTemplateResponse, and TemplateResponse, will be removed. content_type should be used instead. This also applies to the render_to_response() shortcut and the sitemamp views, index() and sitemap().
  • When HttpResponse is instantiated with an iterator, or when content is set to an iterator, that iterator will be immediately consumed.
  • The AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE setting, and the get_profile() method on the User model, will be removed.
  • The cleanup management command will be removed. It’s replaced by clearsessions.
  • The daily_cleanup.py script will be removed.
  • The depth keyword argument will be removed from select_related().
  • The undocumented get_warnings_state()/restore_warnings_state() functions from django.test.utils and the save_warnings_state()/ restore_warnings_state() django.test.*TestCase methods are deprecated. Use the warnings.catch_warnings context manager available starting with Python 2.6 instead.
  • The undocumented check_for_test_cookie method in AuthenticationForm will be removed following an accelerated deprecation. Users subclassing this form should remove calls to this method, and instead ensure that their auth related views are CSRF protected, which ensures that cookies are enabled.
  • The version of django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_confirm() that supports base36 encoded user IDs (django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_confirm_uidb36) will be removed. If your site has been running Django 1.6 for more than PASSWORD_RESET_TIMEOUT_DAYS, this change will have no effect. If not, then any password reset links generated before you upgrade to Django 1.7 won’t work after the upgrade.

1.8

  • django.contrib.comments will be removed.

  • The following transaction management APIs will be removed:

    • TransactionMiddleware,
    • the decorators and context managers autocommit, commit_on_success, and commit_manually, defined in django.db.transaction,
    • the functions commit_unless_managed and rollback_unless_managed, also defined in django.db.transaction,
    • the TRANSACTIONS_MANAGED setting.

    Upgrade paths are described in the transaction management docs.

  • The cycle and firstof template tags will auto-escape their arguments. In 1.6 and 1.7, this behavior is provided by the version of these tags in the future template tag library.

  • The SEND_BROKEN_LINK_EMAILS setting will be removed. Add the django.middleware.common.BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware middleware to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting instead.

  • django.middleware.doc.XViewMiddleware will be removed. Use django.contrib.admindocs.middleware.XViewMiddleware instead.

  • Model._meta.module_name was renamed to model_name.

  • Remove the backward compatible shims introduced to rename get_query_set and similar queryset methods. This affects the following classes: BaseModelAdmin, ChangeList, BaseCommentNode, GenericForeignKey, Manager, SingleRelatedObjectDescriptor and ReverseSingleRelatedObjectDescriptor.

  • Remove the backward compatible shims introduced to rename the attributes ChangeList.root_query_set and ChangeList.query_set.

  • django.views.defaults.shortcut will be removed, as part of the goal of removing all django.contrib references from the core Django codebase. Instead use django.contrib.contenttypes.views.shortcut. django.conf.urls.shortcut will also be removed.

  • Support for the Python Imaging Library (PIL) module will be removed, as it no longer appears to be actively maintained & does not work on Python 3. You are advised to install Pillow, which should be used instead.

  • The following private APIs will be removed:
    • django.db.backend
    • django.db.close_connection()
    • django.db.backends.creation.BaseDatabaseCreation.set_autocommit()
    • django.db.transaction.is_managed()
    • django.db.transaction.managed()
  • django.forms.widgets.RadioInput will be removed in favor of django.forms.widgets.RadioChoiceInput.
  • The module django.test.simple and the class django.test.simple.DjangoTestSuiteRunner will be removed. Instead use django.test.runner.DiscoverRunner.
  • The module django.test._doctest will be removed. Instead use the doctest module from the Python standard library.
  • The CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_ANONYMOUS_ONLY setting will be removed.
  • Usage of the hard-coded Hold down “Control”, or “Command” on a Mac, to select more than one. string to override or append to user-provided help_text in forms for ManyToMany model fields will not be performed by Django anymore either at the model or forms layer.
  • The Model._meta.get_(add|change|delete)_permission methods will be removed.

2.0

  • ssi and url template tags will be removed from the future template tag library (used during the 1.3/1.4 deprecation period).
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