This is a pluggable application for projects based on Django framework and its ORM.

This library stores fossilized revisions of objects and supports fossilized foreign keys.

INSTALLING
----------

Just run "python setup.py install" or just put "fossil" package in PYTHONPATH.

HOW TO USE IT ON YOUR PROJECT
-----------------------------

1. Add 'fossil' to INSTALLED_APPS of settings.py of your project

2. You can use FossilForeignKey fields as you can see below:

    from fossil.fields import FossilForeignKey
    
    class Supplier(models.Model):
        name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
        ...

    class Purchase(models.Model):
        ...
        supplier = FossilForeignKey(Supplier, null=True, blank=True)

The model classe "Purchase" will work as usual, you can set Supplier object to the field
'supplier' but inside it will make a fossil revision for current version of this supplier
and the relation will be made with it. Even if this object is deleted in the future, the
relation will keep here with current data.

3. You can create and/or list manually fossils for objects, like below:

    from fossil.models import Fossil

    # Returns a new or existing fossil for object
    new_fossil = Fossil.objects.create_for_object(my_supplier)

    # Returns all fossils for a given object, ordered by creation date
    list_of_fossils = Fossil.objects.fossils_of_object(qualquer_objeto)

HOW IT WORKS
------------

Django-fossil is stupdly simple. You don't need neither register a model class or inherit
anyone.

It will make a fossil for a given object basing on its serialization and will not duplicate
revisions for object with same values.

The serialization will be made using Django JSON serialization feature, but you can customize
it implementing methods to serialize to string and deserialize to object, like below:

    from django.utils import simplejson
    from fossil.fields import FossilForeignKey

    class SupplierManager(models.Manager):
        def deserialize_for_fossil(self, data):
            json = simplejson.loads(data)

            return Supplier(name=json['name'])
    
    class Supplier(models.Model):
        objects = SupplierManager()
        name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
        
        def serialize_for_fossil(self):
            return simplejson.dumps({'name': self.name})

As you can see above, there are two methods, one to serialize and one to deserialize. The first
one is as part of Model class and the second one is part of Manager class.

So you can use your creativity to make them as you want.