python - Set Django IntegerField by choices=... name

Question

When you have a model field with a choices option you tend to have some magic values associated with human readable names. Is there in Django a convenient way to set these fields by the human readable name instead of the value?

Consider this model:

class Thing(models.Model):
  PRIORITIES = (
    (0, 'Low'),
    (1, 'Normal'),
    (2, 'High'),
  )

  priority = models.IntegerField(default=0, choices=PRIORITIES)

At some point we have a Thing instance and we want to set its priority. Obviously you could do,

thing.priority = 1

But that forces you to memorize the Value-Name mapping of PRIORITIES. This doesn't work:

thing.priority = 'Normal' # Throws ValueError on .save()

Currently I have this silly workaround:

thing.priority = dict((key,value) for (value,key) in Thing.PRIORITIES)['Normal']

but that's clunky. Given how common this scenario could be I was wondering if anyone had a better solution. Is there some field method for setting fields by choice name which I totally overlooked?

Answer 1

Do as seen here. Then you can use a word that represents the proper integer.

Like so:

LOW = 0
NORMAL = 1
HIGH = 2
STATUS_CHOICES = (
    (LOW, 'Low'),
    (NORMAL, 'Normal'),
    (HIGH, 'High'),
)

Then they are still integers in the DB.

Usage would be thing.priority = Thing.NORMAL