Tutorial 3: Setting Up Django Vector Database to Automatically Sync with Our Models

Welcome to Tutorial 3! In the previous tutorial, we added django-vectordb to our Blog Post project. We also saw how to add existing instance to django vector database using management commands. In this tutorial, we will set up our site to automatically sync with the vector database whenever we create, update, or delete post instances.

Let's get started!

Configure Django Vector Database to Automatically Sync with our Models

One of the common pain points while using vector databases is the process of keeping them in sync with our application's data. Synchronizing data can be time-consuming and prone to errors, making it a hassle for developers to manage different data sources effectively.

Django Vector Database provides an effortless solution for this issue by enabling automatic synchronization with our models. By configuring the Django Vector Database AutoSync feature, you can ensure that our site stays in sync with the vector database every time you create, update, or delete posts.

To achieve this seamless integration, you can use the Django Vector Database a convenient shortcut, autosync_model_to_vectordb, which allows you to register our models post_save and post_delete signals with django vector database. This shortcut register signals that will automatically sync our models with the vector database whenever you create, update, or delete instances.

from django.apps import AppConfig


class BlogConfig(AppConfig):
    default_auto_field = "django.db.models.BigAutoField"
    name = "blog"

    def ready(self):
        from vectordb.shortcuts import autosync_model_to_vectordb

        from .models import Post

        autosync_model_to_vectordb(Post)

Info

Although this example focuses on a single model (Post), you can incorporate as many models as desired into the Django vector database.

Note

The automatic synchronization relies on the post_save and post_delete signals. As such, synchronization will not occur when using bulk_create since it does not trigger the post_save signal. If you need to sync after employing bulk_create, you must manually add the instances to the Django vector database. For more information, consult the [django-bulk-create] documentation.

If you prefer, you can manually register the signals by importing the following signal handlers and registering them with our models' post_save and post_delete signals:

# blog/signals.py
from django.db.models.signals import post_save, post_delete

from vectordb.sync_signals import (
    sync_vectordb_on_create_update,
    sync_vectordb_on_delete,
)

from .models import Post

post_save.connect(
    sync_vectordb_on_create_update,
    sender=Post,
    dispatch_uid="update_vector_index_super_unique_id",
)

post_delete.connect(
    sync_vectordb_on_delete,
    sender=Post,
    dispatch_uid="delete_vector_index_super_unique_id",
)

If you choose to manually register the signals you will need to make the following changes to the apps.py:

# blog/apps.py
from django.apps import AppConfig


class BlogConfig(AppConfig):
    default_auto_field = "django.db.models.BigAutoField"
    name = "blog"

    def ready(self):
        import blog.signals

Summary

In this tutorial, we learned how to configure Django Vector Database to automatically sync with our models. We also learned how to use the autosync_model_to_vectordb shortcut to register our models' post_save and post_delete signals with the Django Vector Database. In the upcoming tutorial, we will look at how to manually add data to the django vector database.