force FK attributes to not be its key's reference

[Jacky56]

Assume you have a table such as:

Band(Table):
    uuid = UUID(primary_key=true)
    genre = ForeignKey(Genre)
    
Genre(Table):
   uuid = UUID(primary_key=true)

When I gather data from Band I would like to access Genre's uuid like:

band = Band.objects().first().run_sync()

print(band.genre.uuid) # not print(band.genre)

There's afew reasons why:

• I don't want to perform an unnecessary join using Band.objects(Band.genre)
• Evaluating its type annotation is actually a bit harder now as band.genre could be Genre | UUID

[dantownsend]

Yeah, it's tricky because band.genre could either be:

• a UUID referring to the primary key of a Genre row
• or a Genre object if prefetch was used

If it's a UUID then band.genre.uuid would fail.

Maybe a solution is to have a method like:

class Band(Table):
    def get_foreign_key_value(self, foreign_key: ForeignKey) -> uuid.UUID:
        ...

And then:

>>> band.get_foreign_key_value(Band.genre)
UUID('abcd-1234-....-....')

[Jacky56]

Is it possible to introduce a new implementation to Table where we can use ._. annotation for initialised objects to gather FK values?
e.g

band = Band.objects().first()

print(band._.genre.uuid) # same as band.genre
print(band._.genre.other_column) # returns null

This would be inline on how the classmethod version works as well. (doc)

Band.objects().where(Band._.genre.uuid == ???)

[KianAnbarestani]

To access genre.uuid without triggering an unnecessary join, store only the foreign key UUID in band.genre, not the entire Genre object. This avoids implicit joins and simplifies type annotations, keeping band.genre: UUID. Use an explicit join only when the full Genre data is needed. For example:
band = Band.objects().first().run_sync()
print(band.genre)
This approach keeps models lightweight and avoids ambiguity in type evaluation.