python - Django equivalent for count and group by

Question

I have a model that looks like this:

class Category(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=60)

class Item(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=60)
    category = models.ForeignKey(Category)

I want select count (just the count) of items for each category, so in SQL it would be as simple as this:

select category_id, count(id) from item group by category_id

Is there an equivalent of doing this "the Django way"? Or is plain SQL the only option? I am familiar with the count( ) method in Django, however I don't see how group by would fit there.

Answer 1

Here, as I just discovered, is how to do this with the Django 1.1 aggregation API:

from django.db.models import Count
theanswer = Item.objects.values('category').annotate(Count('category'))