Preventing django from appending "_id" to a foreign key field

You can set the field's db_column attribute to whatever you'd like.

When using the foreign field in a model, Django creates two fields: One for the actual link, and one that references the other model.

class A(Model):
    i = IntegerField()

class B(Model):
    a = ForeignKey(A)

In B there is now two fields: a and a_id. a_id is the unique id as stored in the database, while a can be used to directly access the fields in A, like this:

b = B.objects.get(...)
b.a.i = 5;   # Set the field of A
b.a.save()   # Save A