Get started¶

Django's async ORM isn't async underneath: aget(), acount() and async for run the sync ORM on one worker thread, and every request waits its turn. djox runs those queries on connections that Rust owns and wakes Python only when the answer is ready.

• Really async. No query waits for Django's worker thread.
• Faster, sync too. Simple queries skip Django's compiler, and Rust builds the model instances.
• A drop-in. Two settings. Models, migrations, tests and third-party apps keep working.
• Tested with Django's own tests. 2,395 of Django's ORM tests are ported, 2,390 pass.

Install¶

uv add djox  # or: pip install djox

• Python 3.11+, Django 5.2, 6.0 or 6.1.
• Wheels for Linux, macOS and Windows: no Rust needed.
• SQLite is bundled. For Postgres, install "djox[postgres]", which adds psycopg 3 for Django's sync code.

Set up¶

Change two settings:

# settings.py
DATABASES = {
    "default": {
        "ENGINE": "djox.backends.sqlite3",  # or "djox.backends.postgresql"
        "NAME": BASE_DIR / "db.sqlite3",
    }
}
INSTALLED_APPS = [..., "djox"]  # every model's QuerySet now runs on djox

Write async Django as usual¶

import djox
from django.http import JsonResponse

from shop.models import Book, Order


async def book_detail(request, book_id):
    book = await Book.objects.aget(pk=book_id)  # on djox's connections
    return JsonResponse({"title": book.title, "pages": book.pages})


async def long_books(request):
    titles = [book.title async for book in Book.objects.filter(pages__gt=400)]
    return JsonResponse({"titles": titles})


async def buy(request, book_id):
    async with djox.atomic():  # Django's atomic(), for async code
        book = await Book.objects.aget(pk=book_id)
        await Order.objects.acreate(book=book)
    return JsonResponse({"ok": True})

• Anything djox doesn't run itself falls back to Django's own method, so nothing breaks.
• Sync code (Book.objects.get(...)) keeps working, and simple queries get faster too (the fast lane).

Next¶