Using PostgreSQL unaccent in Django 1.7

Solution taken from this fix [1] to this issue [2].
It looks like this is going to be supported in Django 1.8.

Add this code to your models.py:

from django.db.models import Transform


class Unaccent(Transform):
    bilateral = True
    lookup_name = 'unaccent'

    def as_postgresql(self, compiler, connection):
        lhs, params = compiler.compile(self.lhs)
        return "UNACCENT(%s)" % lhs, params

models.CharField.register_lookup(Unaccent)
models.TextField.register_lookup(Unaccent)

And create the unaccent extension on your database:

CREATE EXTENSION unaccent;

Then you can use it in your filters, like this:

users = User.objects.filter(
    first_name__unaccent__icontains='João'
)

[1] https://github.com/django/django/commit/17fe0bd808a47f37dd1351adb01a8ad2cc852f24
[2] https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/23423