How to Rename a Model in Django without Loosing Data

When you change a model's name and run python manage.py makemigrations, you will get an autogenerated file in your migration.

We want to rename Contact to ContactList in the Django model. After running the migrations, check the folder for the autogenerated file similar to below.

class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    dependencies = [
        migrations.swappable_dependency(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL),
        ('marketing', '0028_sendemail_schedule'),
    ]

    operations = [
        migrations.RenameModel(
            name='LeadContact',
            fields=[
                ('id', models.AutoField(auto_created=True, primary_key=True, serialize=False, verbose_name='ID')),
                ('first_name', models.CharField(max_length=15)),
                ('last_name', models.CharField(max_length=15)),
                ('full_name', models.CharField(blank=True, max_length=50)),
            ],
        ),

You need to do a manual edit. Delete everything inside the operations = [] and replace with the following.

class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    dependencies = [
        migrations.swappable_dependency(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL),
        ('marketing', '0028_sendemail_schedule'),
    ]

    operations = [
        migrations.RenameModel('Contact', 'ContactList')
    ]
    atomic = False

For you to run migrate without error, atomic = False is needed. With the atomic false, you tell SQLite not to check the relationship with other tables but perform only the name change.

Now, run the python manage.py migrate. Things should work fine now.