How to combine two or more querysets in a Django view?

Concatenating the querysets into a list is the simplest approach. If the database will be hit for all querysets anyway (e.g. because the result needs to be sorted), this won't add further cost.

from itertools import chain
result_list = list(chain(page_list, article_list, post_list))

Using itertools.chain is faster than looping each list and appending elements one by one, since itertools is implemented in C. It also consumes less memory than converting each queryset into a list before concatenating.

Now it's possible to sort the resulting list e.g. by date (as requested in hasen j's comment to another answer). The sorted() function conveniently accepts a generator and returns a list:

result_list = sorted(
    chain(page_list, article_list, post_list),
    key=lambda instance: instance.date_created)

If you're using Python 2.4 or later, you can use attrgetter instead of a lambda. I remember reading about it being faster, but I didn't see a noticeable speed difference for a million item list.

from operator import attrgetter
result_list = sorted(
    chain(page_list, article_list, post_list),
    key=attrgetter('date_created'))

Try this:

matches = pages | articles | posts

It retains all the functions of the querysets which is nice if you want to order_by or similar.

Please note: this doesn't work on querysets from two different models.

Related, for mixing querysets from the same model, or for similar fields from a few models, Starting with Django 1.11 a QuerySet.union() method is also available:

union()

union(*other_qs, all=False)

New in Django 1.11. Uses SQL’s UNION operator to combine the results of two or more QuerySets. For example:

>>> qs1.union(qs2, qs3)

The UNION operator selects only distinct values by default. To allow duplicate values, use the all=True argument.

union(), intersection(), and difference() return model instances of the type of the first QuerySet even if the arguments are QuerySets of other models. Passing different models works as long as the SELECT list is the same in all QuerySets (at least the types, the names don’t matter as long as the types in the same order).

In addition, only LIMIT, OFFSET, and ORDER BY (i.e. slicing and order_by()) are allowed on the resulting QuerySet. Further, databases place restrictions on what operations are allowed in the combined queries. For example, most databases don’t allow LIMIT or OFFSET in the combined queries.