The __str__ method on models to print a text representation of the model/class

The next thing we are going to see is a feature that allows us to represent an object as a String and that is the method called Str.

Since if we try to print from a template or using the print function an object that belongs to a model (or class in general); we will see that something like the following will appear:

Comment object (1)

Where the Comment is the name of the model and the (1) is the identifier in the database.

Now, we can represent a Django model as if it were a simple text; This is really a feature that Python offers us and not Django, which is being able to represent an object as if it were a string; therefore, when we print this object, basically the representation that we define in the Str function will appear; for example, for our model:

class Comment(models.Model):
    text = models.TextField()
    date_posted = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    element = models.ForeignKey(Element, related_name='comments', on_delete=models.CASCADE, NULL=True)
 
    def __str__(self):
        return 'Comentario #{}'.format(self.id) 

Here we can access all the attributes and methods of the model that contains said function; and this method is used internally by Python to represent said instance of a class by means of a string when printing the text.

And if we print the following object:

print(elements[0])

When making a print:

Comentario #1

The text we set earlier will appear; you can use this for A whenever you have a class and at some point you want to print it, either through the print function or from the Django template.