This is a convenience method for looking up an object, giving a set of parameters, creating one if necessary.

The trick with the get_or_create method is that it actually returns a tuple of (object, created). The first element is an instance of the model you are trying to retrieve and the second is a boolean flag to tell if the instance was created or not. True means the instance was created by the get_or_create method and False means it was retrieved from the database.

Consider a Django model named AppSettings, where you store configurations parameters of your website.

obj, created = AppSettings.objects.get_or_create(name='DEFAULT_LANG')
obj.value = request.POST.get('DEFAULT_LANG')
obj.save()

So, what happened here: if this was the first time I was saving a setting named DEFAULT_LANG, the get_or_create would create an instance and persist in the database. If this was the second or third time I was saving this setting it would simply update the existing instance.