Syncronizing data between two django servers - database

Question

I have a central Django server containing all of my information in a database. I want to have a second Django server that contains a subset of that information in a second database. I need a bulletproof way to selectively sync data between the two.
The secondary Django will need to pull its subset of data from the primary at certain times. The subset will have to be filtered by certain fields.
The secondary Django will have to occasionally push its data to the primary.
Ideally, the two-way sync would keep the most recently modified objects for each model.
I was thinking something along the lines of having using TimeStampedModel (from django-extensions) or adding my own DateTimeField(auto_now=True) so that every object stores its last modified time. Then, maybe a mechanism to dump the data from one DB and load it in to the other such that only the more recently modified objects are kept.
Possibilities I am considering are django's dumpdata, django-extensions dumpscript, django-test-utils makefixture or maybe django-fixture magic. There's a lot to think about, so I'm not sure which road to proceed down.

Answer 1

Here is my solution, which fits all of my requirements:
Implement natural keys and unique constraints on all models
Allows for a unique way to refer to each object without using primary key IDs
Sublcass each model from TimeStampedModel in django-extensions
Adds automatically updated created and modified fields
Create a Django management command for exporting, which filters a subset of data and serializes it with natural keys
baz = Baz.objects.filter(foo=bar)
yaz = Yaz.objects.filter(foo=bar)
objects = [baz, yaz]
flat_objects = list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(objects))
data = serializers.serialize("json", flat_objects, indent=3, use_natural_keys=True)
print(data)
Create a Django management command for importing, which reads in the serialized file and iterates through the objects as follows:
If the object does not exist in the database (by natural key), create it
If the object exists, check the modified timestamps
If the imported object is newer, update the fields
If the imported object is older, do not update (but print a warning)
Code sample:
# Open the file
with open(args[0]) as data_file:
json_str = data_file.read()
# Deserialize and iterate
for obj in serializers.deserialize("json", json_str, indent=3, use_natural_keys=True):
# Get model info
model_class = obj.object.__class__
natural_key = obj.object.natural_key()
manager = model_class._default_manager
# Delete PK value
obj.object.pk = None
try:
# Get the existing object
existing_obj = model_class.objects.get_by_natural_key(*natural_key)
# Check the timestamps
date_existing = existing_obj.modified
date_imported = obj.object.modified
if date_imported > date_existing:
# Update fields
for field in obj.object._meta.fields:
if field.editable and not field.primary_key:
imported_val = getattr(obj.object, field.name)
existing_val = getattr(existing_obj, field.name)
if existing_val != imported_val:
setattr(existing_obj, field.name, imported_val)
except ObjectDoesNotExist:
obj.save()
The workflow for this is to first call python manage.py exportTool > data.json, then on another django instance (or the same), call python manage.py importTool data.json.