Django - remove duplicate objects where there is more than one field to compare

remove_duplicates.py

from django.db.models import Count, Max

unique_fields = ['field_1', 'field_2']

duplicates = (
    MyModel.objects.values(*unique_fields)
    .order_by()
    .annotate(max_id=Max('id'), count_id=Count('id'))
    .filter(count_id__gt=1)
)

for duplicate in duplicates:
    (
        MyModel.objects
        .filter(**{x: duplicate[x] for x in unique_fields})
        .exclude(id=duplicate['max_id'])
        .delete()
    )

When you have lots of duplicates this becomes very slow. Imagine a table where every row is duplicated, so that you have table_size/2 items in the duplicates QuerySet after the first query and then need to do the delete for each of those one by one.

It gave a really good starting point though. This is what I ended up with, does it all in one query. Running time went from hours to minutes on a large table.

from django.db import connection

def remove_duplicates(model, unique_fields):
    fields  = ', '.join(f't."{f}"' for f in unique_fields)
    sql = f"""
    DELETE FROM {model._meta.db_table} 
    WHERE id IN (
        SELECT 
            UNNEST(ARRAY_REMOVE(dupe_ids, max_id))
        FROM (
            SELECT 
                {fields},
                MAX(t.id) AS max_id,
                ARRAY_AGG(t.id) AS dupe_ids
            FROM
                {model._meta.db_table} t
            GROUP BY
                {fields}
            HAVING
                COUNT(t.id) > 1
        ) a
    )
    """
    with connection.cursor() as cursor:
        cursor.execute(sql)


remove_duplicates(MyModel, ['field_1', 'field_2'])

Thanks a lot! Excellent dimensioning to improve execution performance

Great starting point. Tried to reduce the number of queries without using raw SQL.

def remove_duplicates_from_table(model, lookup_fields):
    duplicates = (
        model.objects.values(*lookup_fields)
        .order_by()
        .annotate(min_id=Min('id'), count_id=Count('id'))
        .filter(count_id__gt=1)
    )

    fields_lookup = Q()
    duplicate_fields_values = duplicates.values(*lookup_fields)
    for val in duplicate_fields_values:
        fields_lookup |= Q(**val)
    min_ids_list = duplicates.values_list('min_id', flat=True)

    if fields_lookup:
        model.objects.filter(fields_lookup).exclude(id__in=min_ids_list).delete()

Ended up using Q object to avoid making select query in each iteration while looping over the duplicates list.

Thank you so much! This is EXACTLY what I needed to fix an issue with one of my migrations taking forever.

@ahmed-zubair-1998 thanks