Check for pending Django migrations

In Django, is there an easy way to check whether all database migrations have been run? I've found manage.py migrate --list, which gives me the information I want, but the format isn't very machine readable.

For context: I have a script that shouldn't start running until the database has been migrated. For various reasons, it would be tricky to send a signal from the process that's running the migrations. So I'd like to have my script periodically check the database to see if all the migrations have run.

Shell

The only simple solution I've found so far is running

./manage.py showmigrations | grep '\[ \]'

which will output an empty string in case all migrations have been applied.

However, it is closely tied to the output format.

Python

I checked the source code of migrate command and it seems like this should do the trick:

from django.db.migrations.executor import MigrationExecutor
from django.db import connections, DEFAULT_DB_ALIAS


def is_database_synchronized(database):
    connection = connections[database]
    connection.prepare_database()
    executor = MigrationExecutor(connection)
    targets = executor.loader.graph.leaf_nodes()
    return not executor.migration_plan(targets)

# Usage example.
if is_database_synchronized(DEFAULT_DB_ALIAS):
    # All migrations have been applied.
    pass
else:
    # Unapplied migrations found.
    pass

1.10 release notes:

> The new makemigrations --check option makes the command exit with a non-zero status when model changes without migrations are detected.

If you don't want to create the migrations, combine it with --dry-run:

python manage.py makemigrations --check --dry-run

Note that this doesn't check whether the migrations were applied, it only checks whether the migration files were created.

Try,

python manage.py migrate --list | grep "\[ \]\|^[a-z]" | grep "[ ]" -B 1

returns,

<app_1>
 [ ] 0001_initial
 [ ] 0002_auto_01201244
 [ ] 0003_auto_12334333

<app_2>
 [ ] 0031_auto_12344544
 [ ] 0032_auto_45456767
 [ ] 0033_auto_23346566

<app_3>
 [ ] 0008_auto_3446677

Update:

If you have updated Django version >= 1.11, use below command,

python manage.py showmigrations | grep '\[ \]\|^[a-z]' | grep '[  ]' -B 1

3.1 release notes

> The new migrate --check option makes the command exit with a non-zero status when unapplied migrations are detected.

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/ref/django-admin/#cmdoption-migrate-check

so finally we can

python manage.py migrate --check

./manage.py showmigrations #check which already-made migrations have been applied or not
(or: ./manage.py showmigrations someApp #for specific app alone)

./manage.py makemigrations --dry-run #check for migrations to be made
(or: ./manage.py makemigrations someApp --dry-run #for specific app alone)

./manage.py makemigrations #make the migrations
(or: ./manage.py makemigrations someApp #for specific app alone)

./manage.py showmigrations #check which already-made migrations have been applied or not
(or: ./manage.py showmigrations someApp #for specific app alone)

./manage.py sqlmigrate someApp 0001 #view SQL changes for specific app & migration

./manage.py migrate #apply migrations
(or: ./manage.py migrate someApp #for specific app alone)

./manage.py showmigrations #check which already-made migrations have been applied or not
(or: ./manage.py showmigrations someApp #for specific app alone)

./manage.py makemigrations --dry-run #check for migrations to be made
(or: ./manage.py makemigrations someApp --dry-run #for specific app alone)

PS:
./manage.py migrate someApp zero #unapply all migrations for specific app

The documentation for these commands can be found here on the Django project's website.

Using @Ernest code, I've written a manage_custom.py for pending migrations. You can get the list of pending migrations also migrate those pending migrations (only), hence saving your time.

manage_custom.py

__author__ = "Parag Tyagi"

# set environment
import os
import sys
import django
sys.path.append('../')
os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'settings')
django.setup()

from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line
from django.db import DEFAULT_DB_ALIAS, connections
from django.db.migrations.executor import MigrationExecutor


class Migration(object):
    """
    A custom manage.py file for managing pending migrations (only)
    """

    def __init__(self, migrate_per_migration_id=False):
        """
        :param migrate_per_migration_id: Setting this to `True` will migrate each pending migration of any
        particular app individually. `False` will migrate the whole app at a time.

        You can add more arguments (viz. showmigrations, migrate) by defining the argument with prefix as 'ARGV_'
        and create its functionality accordingly.
        """
        self.ARG_PREFIX = 'ARGV_'
        self.MIGRATE_PER_MIGRATION_ID = migrate_per_migration_id
        self.ARGV_showmigrations = False
        self.ARGV_migrate = False

    @staticmethod
    def get_pending_migrations(database):
        """
        :param database: Database alias
        :return: List of pending migrations
        """
        connection = connections[database]
        connection.prepare_database()
        executor = MigrationExecutor(connection)
        targets = executor.loader.graph.leaf_nodes()
        return executor.migration_plan(targets)

    def check_arguments(self, args):
        """
        Method for checking arguments passed while running the command
        :param args: Dictionary of arguments passed while running the script file
        :return: Set the argument variable ('ARGV_<argument>') to True if found else terminate the script
        """
        required_args = filter(None, [var.split(self.ARG_PREFIX)[1] if var.startswith(self.ARG_PREFIX)
                                      else None for var in self.__dict__.keys()])
        if any(k in args for k in required_args):
            for arg in required_args:
                if arg in args:
                    setattr(self, '{}{}'.format(self.ARG_PREFIX, arg), True)
                    break
        else:
            print ("Please pass argument: {}"
                   "\ne.g. python manage_custom.py {}".format(required_args, required_args[0]))
            sys.exit()

    def do_migration(self):
        """
        Migrates all the pending migrations (if any)
        """
        pending_migrations = self.get_pending_migrations(DEFAULT_DB_ALIAS)
        if pending_migrations:
            done_app = []
            for mig in pending_migrations:
                app, migration_id = str(mig[0]).split('.')
                commands = ['manage.py', 'migrate'] + ([app, migration_id] if self.MIGRATE_PER_MIGRATION_ID else [app])
                if self.ARGV_migrate and (app not in done_app or self.MIGRATE_PER_MIGRATION_ID):
                    execute_from_command_line(commands)
                    done_app.append(app)
                elif self.ARGV_showmigrations:
                    print (str(mig[0]))
        else:
            print ("No pending migrations")


if __name__ == '__main__':
    args = sys.argv
    migration = Migration()
    migration.check_arguments(args)
    migration.do_migration()

Usage:

# below command will show all pending migrations
python manage_custom.py showmigrations

# below command will migrate all pending migrations
python manage_custom.py migrate

PS: Please setup environment as per your project structure.

Here is my Python soloution to get some information about the migration-states:

from io import StringIO  # for Python 2 use from StringIO import StringIO  
from django.core.management import call_command 

def get_migration_state():
    result = []
    out = StringIO()
    call_command('showmigrations', format="plan", stdout=out)
    out.seek(0)
    for line in out.readlines():
        status, name = line.rsplit(' ', 1)
        result.append((status.strip() == '[X]', name.strip()))
    return result

The result of this function looks like that:

[(True, 'contenttypes.0001_initial'),
 (True, 'auth.0001_initial'),
 (False, 'admin.0001_initial'),
 (False, 'admin.0002_logentry_remove_auto_add')]

Maybe it helps some of you guys..

I checked it by looking up the table django_migrations, which stores all applied migrations.

Tested for Django 3.2:

python manage.py makemigrations --check --dry-run

expected output would be:

'No changes detected'

if there are no pending changes in the Models requiring a migration to be created

python manage.py migrate --plan

expected output would be:

'Planned operations: No planned migration operations.'

You can use it in python script with call_command and develop a way to check for the expected output. If there are any pending makemigrations of migrate calls, the output will be different from the expected and you can understand that something is missing.

I'm running this at a CI/CD pipeline with very good results.

Make it simple:

$ until python manage.py migrate --check ; do echo "Migration not completed" ; done