Django Deprecation Timeline

This document outlines when various pieces of Django will be removed, following their deprecation, as per the deprecation policy.

1.3

  • AdminSite.root(). This release will remove the old method for hooking up admin URLs. This has been deprecated since the 1.1 release.
  • Authentication backends need to define the boolean attributes supports_object_permissions and supports_anonymous_user. The old backend style is deprecated since the 1.2 release.
  • The django.contrib.gis.db.backend module, including the SpatialBackend interface, is deprecated since the 1.2 release.

1.4

  • CsrfResponseMiddleware. This has been deprecated since the 1.2 release, in favor of the template tag method for inserting the CSRF token. CsrfMiddleware, which combines CsrfResponseMiddleware and CsrfViewMiddleware, is also deprecated.
  • The old imports for CSRF functionality (django.contrib.csrf.*), which moved to core in 1.2, will be removed.
  • SMTPConnection. The 1.2 release deprecated the SMTPConnection class in favor of a generic E-mail backend API.
  • The many to many SQL generation functions on the database backends will be removed.
  • The ability to use the DATABASE_* family of top-level settings to define database connections will be removed.
  • The ability to use shorthand notation to specify a database backend (i.e., sqlite3 instead of django.db.backends.sqlite3) will be removed.
  • The get_db_prep_save, get_db_prep_value and get_db_prep_lookup methods on Field were modified in 1.2 to support multiple databases. In 1.4, the support functions that allow methods with the old prototype to continue working will be removed.
  • The Message model (in django.contrib.auth), its related manager in the User model (user.message_set), and the associated methods (user.message_set.create() and user.get_and_delete_messages()), which have been deprecated since the 1.2 release, will be removed. The messages framework should be used instead. The related messages variable returned by the auth context processor will also be removed. Note that this means that the admin application depends on the messages context processor.
  • Authentication backends need to support the obj parameter for permission checking. The supports_object_permissions variable is not checked any longer and can be removed.
  • Authentication backends need to support the AnonymousUser being passed to all methods dealing with permissions. The supports_anonymous_user variable is not checked any longer and can be removed.
  • The ability to specify a callable template loader rather than a Loader class will be removed, as will the load_template_source functions that are included with the built in template loaders for backwards compatibility. These have been deprecated since the 1.2 release.
  • django.utils.translation.get_date_formats() and django.utils.translation.get_partial_date_formats(). These functions are replaced by the new locale aware formatting; use django.utils.formats.get_format() to get the appropriate formats.
  • In django.forms.fields: DEFAULT_DATE_INPUT_FORMATS, DEFAULT_TIME_INPUT_FORMATS and DEFAULT_DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS. Use django.utils.formats.get_format() to get the appropriate formats.
  • The ability to use a function-based test runners will be removed, along with the django.test.simple.run_tests() test runner.
  • The views.feed() view and feeds.Feed class in django.contrib.syndication have been deprecated since the 1.2 release. The class-based view views.Feed should be used instead.
  • django.core.context_processors.auth. This release will remove the old method in favor of the new method in django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth. This has been deprecated since the 1.2 release.
  • The postgresql database backend has been deprecated in favor of the postgresql_psycopg2 backend.
  • The no language code has been deprecated in favor of the nb language code.
  • Authentication backends need to define the boolean attribute supports_inactive_user.
  • django.db.models.fields.XMLField will be removed. This was deprecated as part of the 1.3 release. An accelerated deprecation schedule has been used because the field hasn’t performed any role beyond that of a simple TextField since the removal of oldforms. All uses of XMLField can be replaced with TextField.

1.5

  • The mod_python request handler has been deprecated since the 1.3 release. The mod_wsgi handler should be used instead.
  • The template attribute on Response objects returned by the test client has been deprecated since the 1.3 release. The templates attribute should be used instead.
  • The features of the django.test.simple.DjangoTestRunner (including fail-fast and Ctrl-C test termination) can now be provided by the unittest-native TextTestRunner. The DjangoTestRunner will be removed in favor of using the unittest-native class.
  • The undocumented function django.contrib.formtools.utils.security_hash() is deprecated, in favor of django.contrib.formtools.utils.form_hmac()
  • The function-based generic views have been deprecated in favor of their class-based cousins. The following modules will be removed:
  • The AdminMediaHandler has been deprecated in favor of the StaticFilesHandler.
  • The url and ssi template tags will be modified so that the first argument to each tag is a template variable, not an implied string. The new-style behavior is provided in the future template tag library.
  • The reset and sqlreset management commands are deprecated.
  • Authentication backends need to support a inactive user being passed to all methods dealing with permissions. The supports_inactive_user variable is not checked any longer and can be removed.
  • transform() will raise a GEOSException when called on a geometry with no SRID value.
  • CompatCookie will be removed in favor of SimpleCookie.
  • django.core.context_processors.PermWrapper and django.core.context_processors.PermLookupDict will be moved to django.contrib.auth.context_processors.PermWrapper and django.contrib.auth.context_processors.PermLookupDict, respectively.
  • The MEDIA_URL or STATIC_URL settings are required to end with a trailing slash to ensure there is a consistent way to combine paths in templates.
  • django.db.models.fields.URLField.verify_exists was deprecated in 1.4 due to intractable security and performance issues. The argument will be removed in 1.5.

1.6

  • The compatibility modules django.utils.copycompat and django.utils.hashcompat as well as the functions django.utils.itercompat.all and django.utils.itercompat.any have been deprecated since the 1.4 release. The native 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 CacheClass backend was split into two in Django 1.3 in order to introduce support for PyLibMC. The historical CacheClass is now an alias for MemcachedCache. In Django 1.6, the historical alias will be removed.
  • The UK-prefixed objects of django.contrib.localflavor.uk will only be accessible through their new GB-prefixed names (GB is the correct ISO 3166 code for United Kingdom). They have been deprecated since the 1.4 release.
  • 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 deprecated.
  • 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 template tag django.contrib.admin.templatetags.adminmedia.admin_media_prefix() was deprecated since Django 1.4 and will be removed in favor of the generic static files handling.
  • The builin truncation functions django.utils.text.truncate_words() and django.utils.text.truncate_html_words() were deprecated since Django 1.4 and 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.
  • In 1.4, functions include(), patterns() and url() plus handler404, handler500 were moved to django.conf.urls from their previous location django.conf.urls.defaults. This module was deprecated at the same time and will be removed in this Django release.
  • The Databrowse contrib module was deprecated in 1.4 and will be removed.

2.0

  • django.views.defaults.shortcut(). This function has been moved to django.contrib.contenttypes.views.shortcut() as part of the goal of removing all django.contrib references from the core Django codebase. The old shortcut will be removed in the 2.0 release.
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