Django / Python — Dynamically Create Queries from a String and the OR operator

I couldn’t figure out what to title this post, but this victory felt sweet.

I wanted to make a searchable, sorted list of an arbitrary amount of fields to check against.

Normally, we use a Q object to get to the | “or” operator.
Person.objects.filter( Q(first_name__icontains='Yuji') | Q(last_name__icontains='Tomita')

But I wanted to use dynamic field names so that I can use this same ‘factory’ on other models.

With much needed prodding in the right direction by mattmcc, I figured it out.

The much needed key was how to use keyword arguments:
Person.objects.filter(first_name__icontains=’Yuji’)
is equal to:
Person.objects.filter( **{‘first_name__icontains’:'Yuji’})

Therefore, I could create as many Q objects as I wanted in a list.

q_list = []
for q in query_string.split(‘ ‘):
for field in fields:
q_list.append( Q(**{field+’__icontains’: q})
query = model.objects.filter( reduce(operator.or_, q_list)

Bam!