bulk_create with ForeignKey fields with mixed filled/None values fails.

[Hans Aarne Liblik]

I have a model with ForeignKey (null=True) to another model

class A(models.Model):
  name = models.CharField()

class B(models.Model):
  name = models.CharField()
  a = models.ForeignKey(A, on_delete=models.CASCADE, null=True)

When I try to use bulk_create as follows

B.objects.bulk_create([
  B(name='first', a_id=1)
  B(name='seconds', a_id=None)
])

the query fails with error

django.db.utils.DatabaseError: ORA-01790: expression must have same datatype as corresponding expression

I got bulk_create working if the ForeignKey references are either All None or All NOT None. It seems like the fix introduced in https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/22669 fixes the case for NumberFields and CharFields, but ForeignKey field 'target_field' for me is 'AutoField' which is not defined in

django/db/backends/oracle/utils.py#52  class BulkInsertMapper:

Manually editing that this file and adding

class BulkInsertMapper:
  ...
  types: {
    ...
    ...
    'AutoField': NUMBER
  }

fixes the issue for me.

[Simon Charette]

That seems like the correct approach. Would you be interested in submitting a Github PR that addresses the issue?

Based on c4e2fc5d9872c9a0c9c052a2e124f8a9b87de9b4 adding a nullable foreign key on NullableFields to another test model of the same module should be sufficient to augment the test_bulk_insert_nullable_fields test to cover this case.

[Hans Aarne Liblik]

Any progress on this? If not, I can take over.

[Hardik Patel]

Replying to Hans Aarne Liblik:

Any progress on this? If not, I can take over.

It is looking harder than I expected. I am just a newbie. I will come back later. Feel free to take over

[Mariusz Felisiak]

Hans, Please remember to add also SmallAutoField and BigAutoField.

[Hans Aarne Liblik]

​https://github.com/django/django/pull/12506

[Mariusz Felisiak <felisiak.mariusz@…>]

In a21f7b91:

Fixed #31301 -- Fixed crash of QuerySet.bulk_create() with mixed empty and set ForeignKeys to AutoFields on Oracle.

[Hans Aarne Liblik]

This didn't get into 3.0.4 release?

[Mariusz Felisiak]

No, this doesn't qualify for a backport, see ​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/internals/release-process/ for more details.

[Marti Raudsepp]

@felixxm, are you sure this doesn't qualify?

It seems like a significant issue to me; the backport criteria does list "Crashing bugs".

If I understand correctly, it causes different database backends to behave differently? Which is always a bad surprise.

[Mariusz Felisiak]

It doesn't qualify for a backport from the same reason that #22669 didn't qualify. It's not a regression it existed since 9fe050a27598cdce7f2ef7a332b4818b493a8702 (Django 1.4) so it's not crucial.

[Marti Raudsepp]

What's your suggested solution for users who are hitting this bug now? I can think of:

• Fork Django, backport the fix manually, and continue to maintain the fork until Django 3.1.0 is released and upgrading is viable
• Upgrade to Django development "master" branch, which sometimes breaks third-party Django addons
• Stop using Django until August 2020 rolls around (just sarcastic, sorry!)

Am I missing something? This is behavior that everyone agrees is a bug, and a helpful user provided a pull request to fix it. Yet you are leaving users hanging without a good solution for ~5 months.

Seems like a bug in the backport policy itself :)

[Mariusz Felisiak]

I'm sorry Marti but that's our policy. We're fixing dozens of bugs in each month and only few of them are backported. We don't backport all bugfixes to minimize the risk of regressions.

[Claude Paroz]

Replying to Marti Raudsepp:

• Fork Django, backport the fix manually, and continue to maintain the fork until Django 3.1.0 is released and upgrading is viable

I think that's clearly the way to go if the fix is critical to your application. You may have to update your fork once a month if Django periodic minor release contains security fixes, but that's a price to pay for Django general stability where you can almost blindly apply minor upgrades without worrying. And even with this strict backport policy, it has happened in the past that such fixes have introduced regressions, so I don't think we should relax this policy.