When saving, how can you check if a field has changed?

Essentially, you want to override the __init__ method of models.Model so that you keep a copy of the original value. This makes it so that you don't have to do another DB lookup (which is always a good thing).

    class Person(models.Model):
        name = models.CharField()

        __original_name = None

        def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
            super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
            self.__original_name = self.name

        def save(self, force_insert=False, force_update=False, *args, **kwargs):
            if self.name != self.__original_name:
                # name changed - do something here

            super().save(force_insert, force_update, *args, **kwargs)
            self.__original_name = self.name

I use following mixin:

from django.forms.models import model_to_dict


class ModelDiffMixin(object):
    """
    A model mixin that tracks model fields' values and provide some useful api
    to know what fields have been changed.
    """

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(ModelDiffMixin, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.__initial = self._dict

    @property
    def diff(self):
        d1 = self.__initial
        d2 = self._dict
        diffs = [(k, (v, d2[k])) for k, v in d1.items() if v != d2[k]]
        return dict(diffs)

    @property
    def has_changed(self):
        return bool(self.diff)

    @property
    def changed_fields(self):
        return self.diff.keys()

    def get_field_diff(self, field_name):
        """
        Returns a diff for field if it's changed and None otherwise.
        """
        return self.diff.get(field_name, None)

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        """
        Saves model and set initial state.
        """
        super(ModelDiffMixin, self).save(*args, **kwargs)
        self.__initial = self._dict

    @property
    def _dict(self):
        return model_to_dict(self, fields=[field.name for field in
                             self._meta.fields])

Usage:

>>> p = Place()
>>> p.has_changed
False
>>> p.changed_fields
[]
>>> p.rank = 42
>>> p.has_changed
True
>>> p.changed_fields
['rank']
>>> p.diff
{'rank': (0, 42)}
>>> p.categories = [1, 3, 5]
>>> p.diff
{'categories': (None, [1, 3, 5]), 'rank': (0, 42)}
>>> p.get_field_diff('categories')
(None, [1, 3, 5])
>>> p.get_field_diff('rank')
(0, 42)
>>>

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Note

Please note that this solution works well in context of current request only. Thus it's suitable primarily for simple cases. In concurrent environment where multiple requests can manipulate the same model instance at the same time, you definitely need a different approach.