Getting a count of objects in a queryset in Django

To get the number of votes for a specific item, you would use:

vote_count = Item.objects.filter(votes__contest=contestA).count()

If you wanted a break down of the distribution of votes in a particular contest, I would do something like the following:

contest = Contest.objects.get(pk=contest_id)
votes   = contest.votes_set.select_related()

vote_counts = {}

for vote in votes:
  if not vote_counts.has_key(vote.item.id):
    vote_counts[vote.item.id] = {
      'item': vote.item,
      'count': 0
    }

  vote_counts[vote.item.id]['count'] += 1

This will create dictionary that maps items to number of votes. Not the only way to do this, but it’s pretty light on database hits, so will run pretty quickly.