Migrations are an essential part of Django, as they allow you to manage your database schema and ensure that it is consistent with your models. Most migrations capture actual changes to your models, but there are some scenarios where you may need to create an empty migration file.

In this article, we will show you how to create an empty migration file manually in Django. We will also cover the option to provide a custom name for the migration file.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, make sure you have Django installed and your Django project set up.

Creating an empty migration file

Open your terminal or command prompt and navigate to the root directory of your Django project. Then use the following command - 

python manage.py makemigrations <app_name> --empty

Replace <app_name> with the name of the app for which you want to create the migration file.

That's all! Django will generate a new empty migration file in the appropriate app's migrations directory.

Providing a Custom Migration Name

Additionally, Django allows you to provide a custom name for the migration file while creating an empty migration.

python manage.py makemigrations <app_name> --name <migration_name> --empty

Replace <app_name> with the name of the app, and <migration_name> with your desired name for the migration file.

Conclusion

Empty migration files can be useful in specific scenarios where you need to add migration operations manually without any model changes. In this article, we learned how to create an empty migration file in Django manually.

Additionally, we explored the option to provide a custom name for the migration file, allowing for better organization and readability within your Django project.