Proper way to bulk_create for ManyToMany field, Django?

As shown in Du D's answer, Django ManyToMany fields use a table called through that contains three columns: the ID of the relation, the ID of the object linked to and the ID of the object linked from. You can use bulk_create on through to bulk create ManyToMany relations.

As a quick example, you could bulk create Tag to Photo relations like this:

tag1 = Tag.objects.get(id=1)
tag2 = Tag.objects.get(id=2)
photo1 = Photo.objects.get(id=1)
photo2 = Photo.objects.get(id=2)


through_objs = [
    Tag.photos.through(
        photo_id=photo1.id,
        tag_id=tag1.id,
    ),
    Tag.photos.through(
        photo_id=photo1.id,
        tag_id=tag2.id,
    ),
    Tag.photos.through(
        photo_id=photo2.id,
        tag_id=tag2.id,
    ),
]
Tag.photos.through.objects.bulk_create(through_objs)

General solution

Here is a general solution that you can run to set up ManyToMany relations between any list of object pairs.

from typing import Iterable
from collections import namedtuple


ManyToManySpec = namedtuple(
    "ManyToManySpec", ["from_object", "to_object"]
)


def bulk_create_manytomany_relations(
    model_from,
    field_name: str,
    model_from_name: str,
    model_to_name: str,
    specs: Iterable[ManyToManySpec]
):
    through_objs = []
    for spec in specs:
        through_objs.append(
            getattr(model_from, field_name).through(
                **{
                    f"{model_from_name.lower()}_id": spec.from_object.id,
                    f"{model_to_name.lower()}_id": spec.to_object.id,
                }
            )
        )
    getattr(model_from, field_name).through.objects.bulk_create(through_objs)

Example usage

tag1 = Tag.objects.get(id=1)
tag2 = Tag.objects.get(id=2)
photo1 = Photo.objects.get(id=1)
photo2 = Photo.objects.get(id=2)

bulk_create_manytomany_relations(
    model_from=Tag,
    field_name="photos",
    model_from_name="tag",
    model_to_name="photo",
    specs=[
        ManyToManySpec(from_object=tag1, to_object=photo1),
        ManyToManySpec(from_object=tag1, to_object=photo2),
        ManyToManySpec(from_object=tag2, to_object=photo2),
    ]
)

TL;DR Use the "through" model to bulk insert m2m relationships.

"Tag.photos.through" => Django generated Model with 3 fields [ id, photo, tag ]
photo_tag_1 = Tag.photos.through(photo_id=1, tag_id=1)
photo_tag_2 = Tag.photos.through(photo_id=1, tag_id=2)
Tag.photos.through.objects.bulk_insert([photo_tag_1, photo_tag_2, ...])

---

This is the fastest way that I know of, I use this all the time to create test data. I can generate millions of records in minutes.

Edit from Georgy:

def add_tags(count):
    Tag.objects.bulk_create([Tag(tag='tag%s' % t) for t in range(count)])

    tag_ids = list(Tag.objects.values_list('id', flat=True))
    photo_ids = Photo.objects.values_list('id', flat=True)
    tag_count = len(tag_ids)
       
    for photo_id in photo_ids:
        tag_to_photo_links = []
        shuffle(tag_ids)

        rand_num_tags = randint(0, tag_count)
        photo_tags = tag_ids[:rand_num_tags]

        for tag_id in photo_tags:
            # through is the model generated by django to link m2m between tag and photo
            photo_tag = Tag.photos.through(tag_id=tag_id, photo_id=photo_id)
            tag_to_photo_links.append(photo_tag)

        Tag.photos.through.objects.bulk_create(tag_to_photo_links, batch_size=7000)

I didn't create the model to test, but the structure is there you might have to tweaks some stuff to make it work. Let me know if you run into any problems.

[edited]