Django Polls App – AttributeError

I am working on the Django app poll as a way to go back to basics and learn Django using the documentation.

I got stuck pretty early on in Part 2, which highlighted to me how easy it is to add the wrong code into the wrong place and not even see it!

I had to include a choice for my poll, an answer to the question “What’s up?” – one choice is “Not much” but when I went to add it in shell

>>> q.choice_set.create(choice_text='Not much', votes=0)

I received an Attribute Error which was :

“Attribute Error: ‘Choice’ object has no attribute ‘question_text’

Here is my code:

class Question(models.Model):

    question_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    pub_date = models.DateTimeField("date published")



    def __str__(self):

        return self.question_text # CORRECT

    

    def was_published_recently(self):

        return self.pub_date >= timezone.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=1)





class Choice(models.Model):

    question = models.ForeignKey(Question, on_delete=models.CASCADE)

    choice_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    votes = models.IntegerField(default=0)



    def __str__(self):

        return self.question_text # INCORRECT

The error occurred because in the very last line

return self.question_text

it should actually be

return self.choice_text

Instead of the code expecting a choice to a question, I had the code believe it was expecting a question text.

I had copied the same return as the Question function and I don’t even remember doing it!

Once I made the change to choice_text everything worked fine.

class Question(models.Model):

    question_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    pub_date = models.DateTimeField("date published")



    def __str__(self):

        return self.question_text

    

    def was_published_recently(self):

        return self.pub_date >= timezone.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=1)





class Choice(models.Model):

    question = models.ForeignKey(Question, on_delete=models.CASCADE)

    choice_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    votes = models.IntegerField(default=0)



    def __str__(self):

        return self.choice_text

When it comes to writing code it is really easy to add a letter, miss out a comma, or repeat something you are not meant to and what I am learning is if there is an error, it’s always me – not the code!