I am new to Django and Django-Rest. I am confused about when I should use these? what are their advantages and disadvantages? I have only seen this- http://www.cdrf.co
The only thing I know is there are a lot of ways to do 1 thing. But this is totally unclear to me.
In Django, these four terms we use frequently for different purposes in the projects. I have tried to collect and share the actual meaning with the links to details description of each term. Please check if you find these helpful.
Generic views:
“Django’s generic views... were developed as a shortcut for common usage patterns... They take certain common idioms and patterns found in view development and abstract them so that you can quickly write common views of data without having to repeat yourself.”
— Django Documentation
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Views:
A view function, or view for short, is simply a Python function that takes a Web request and returns a Web response. This response can be the HTML contents of a Web page, or a redirect, or a 404 error, or an XML document, or an image . . . or anything, really. The view itself contains whatever arbitrary logic is necessary to return that response. This code can live anywhere you want, as long as it’s on your Python path. There’s no other requirement–no “magic,” so to speak. For the sake of putting the code somewhere, the convention is to put views in a file called views.py, placed in your project or application directory.
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Viewsets:
Django REST framework allows you to combine the logic for a set of related views in a single class, called a ViewSet. In other frameworks, you may also find conceptually similar implementations named something like 'Resources' or 'Controllers'.
A ViewSet class is simply a type of class-based View, that does not provide any method handlers such as .get() or .post(), and instead provides actions such as .list() and .create().
The method handlers for a ViewSet are only bound to the corresponding actions at the point of finalizing the view, using the .as_view() method.
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Mixins:
The mixin classes provide the actions that are used to provide the basic view behavior. Note that the mixin classes provide action methods rather than defining the handler methods, such as .get() and .post(), directly. This allows for more flexible composition of behavior.
The mixin classes can be imported from rest_framework.mixins.
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Related
I was wondering that whether Django is a MVC or MVT framework? I searched this question on net but didn't find any suitable or satisfactory answer.
I found a partial answer to this question directly in Django's FAQs
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/faq/general/#django-appears-to-be-a-mvc-framework-but-you-call-the-controller-the-view-and-the-view-the-template-how-come-you-don-t-use-the-standard-names
Quoting directly here for convenience:
Django appears to be a MVC framework, but you call the Controller the “view”, and the View the “template”. How come you don’t use the standard names?
Well, the standard names are debatable. In our
interpretation of MVC, the “view” describes the data that gets
presented to the user. It’s not necessarily how the data looks, but
which data is presented. The view describes which data you see, not
how you see it. It’s a subtle distinction. So, in our case, a “view”
is the Python callback function for a particular URL, because that
callback function describes which data is presented. Furthermore, it’s
sensible to separate content from presentation – which is where
templates come in. In Django, a “view” describes which data is
presented, but a view normally delegates to a template, which
describes how the data is presented. Where does the “controller” fit
in, then? In Django’s case, it’s probably the framework itself: the
machinery that sends a request to the appropriate view, according to
the Django URL configuration. If you’re hungry for acronyms, you might
say that Django is a “MTV” framework – that is, “model”, “template”,
and “view.” That breakdown makes much more sense. At the end of the
day, it comes down to getting stuff done. And, regardless of how
things are named, Django gets stuff done in a way that’s most logical
to us.
Django is an MVT based framework. And in that “M” stand for Model “V” stands for View & “T” stands for Template
Model: The Model is the logical data structure behind the entire application and is represented by a database(generally relational databases such as MySql, Postgres).
View: View is the main functionality part of Django architecture, where we write the business logic which is going to be responsible for request and response according to the client inputs.
Template: By the name itself it's showing its behavior. The template is the part that is used for the representation of HTML pages on the web browser.
If you want more specific detail about django mvt architecture, you can refer to this article which I found good and they have explained very well with a diagram representation Django MVT Architecture
Django follows MVC pattern very closely but it uses slightly different terminology. Django is essentially an MTV (Model-Template-View) framework. Django uses the term Templates for Views and Views for Controller. In other words, in Django views are called templates, and controllers are called views. Hence our HTML code will be in templates and Python code will be in views and models.
A complete explanation of this can be found here - https://overiq.com/django-1-10/mvc-pattern-and-django/
Djnago follows MVT framework.M=model V=views. T=templates
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/django-project-mvt-structure/
I am new to django and i ahve gone through all the docs of django. right now if we give some link in template and defined that link in urls.py i.e which view is going to handle that link. like this url(r'^dashboard/gift/$', login_required(CouponPageView.as_view())),
But i have this little doubt can i call different function of a view on clicking different links present in template.
The idea behind a class-based view is not to serve multiple resources (the targets of the links in your template). The idea is that the class-based view implements methods for the various HTTP methods (i.e. get, post, put, delete, head).
So you can server an HTTP GET of a certain URI using the SomeView.get() method, or you can handle a POST to the same resource from the post() method in the same SomeView class. This is helpful to support object oriented code, as the different methods on the object will typically share some resources.
If you want to handle different URL's, write different View classes. If their functionality is similar, use inheritance to prevent code duplication. If their functionality is almost identical, use parameters in the urlpattern.
I think you need to study the URL dispatcher a little more: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/urls/
I'd like to know where to put code that doesn't belong to a view, I mean, the logic.
I've been reading a few similar posts, but couldn't arrive to a conclusion.
What I could understand is:
A View is like a controller, and lot of logic should not put in the controller.
Models should not have a lot of logic either.
So where is all the logic based stuff supposed to be?
I'm coming from Groovy/Grails and for example if we need to access the DB or if we have a complex logic, we use services, and then those services are injected into the controllers.
Is it a good practice to have .py files containing things other than Views and Models in Django?
PS: I've read that some people use a services.py, but then other people say this is a bad practice, so I'm a little confused...
I don't know why you say
we can't put a lot of logic in the controller, and we cannot have the models with a lot of logic either
You can certainly put logic in either of those places. It depends to a great extent what that logic is: if it's specifically related to a single model class, it should go in the model. If however it's more related to a specific page, it can go in a view.
Alternatively, if it's more general logic that's used in multiple views, you could put it in a separate utility module. Or, you could use class-based views with a superclass that defines the logic, and subclasses which inherit from it.
Having a java background I can relate with this question.
I have been working on python for quite some time. Even though I do my best to treat Java as Java and Python as Python, some times I mix them both so that I can get a good deal out of both.
In short
Put all model related stuff in models app, it could be from simply models definition to custom save , pre save hooks .....
Put any request/ response related stuff in views, and some logic like verifying Jon schema, validation request body ... handling exceptions and so on ....
Put your business logic in separate folder/ app or module per views directory/ app. Meaning have separate middle module between your models and views.
There isn't strict rule to organise your code as long as you are consistent.
Project : Ci
Models: ci/model/device.py
Views: ci/views/list_device.py
Business logic:
(1) ci/business_logic/discover_device.py
Or
(2) ci/views/discover_device.py
Short answer: Django is more of a MTV or MVT (Model / Template / View), as described in the official FAQ : https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/faq/general/#django-appears-to-be-a-mvc-framework-but-you-call-the-controller-the-view-and-the-view-the-template-how-come-you-don-t-use-the-standard-names
The business logic has its place in your views, but nothing prevents you from putting it inside a "utils.py", "services.py" or anything to your liking.
If the functionality fits well as a method of some model instance, put it there. After all, models are just classes.
Otherwise, just write a Python module (some .py file) and put the code there, just like in any other Python library.
Don't put it in the views. Views should be the only part of your code that is aware of HTTP, and they should stay as small as possible.
I always use FBVs (Function Based Views) when creating a django app because it's very easy to handle. But most developers said that it's better to use CBVs (Class Based Views) and use only FBVs if it is complicated views that would be a pain to implement with CBVs.
Why? What are the advantages of using CBVs?
The single most significant advantage is inheritance. On a large project it's likely that you will have lots of similar views. Rather than write the same code again and again, you can simply have your views inherit from a base view.
Also django ships with a collection of generic view classes that can be used to do some of the most common tasks. For example the DetailView class is used to pass a single object from one of your models, render it with a template and return the http response. You can plug it straight into your url conf..
url(r'^author/(?P<pk>\d+)/$', DetailView.as_view(model=Author)),
Or you could extend it with custom functionality
class SpecialDetailView(DetailView):
model = Author
def get_context_data(self, *args, **kwargs):
context = super(SpecialDetailView, self).get_context_data(*args, **kwargs)
context['books'] = Book.objects.filter(popular=True)
return context
Now your template will be passed a collection of book objects for rendering.
A nice place to start with this is having a good read of the docs (Django 4.0+).
Update
ccbv.co.uk has comprehensive and easy to use information about the class based views you already have available to you.
When I started with DJango I never used CBVs because of their learning curve and a bit complex structure. Fast forward over two years, I use FBVs only at few places. Where I am sure the code will be really simple and is going to stay simple.
Major benefit of CBVs and Multiple Inheritence that comes along with them is that I can completely avoid writing signals, helper methods and copy paste code. Especially in the cases where the app does much more than basic CRUD operations. Views with multiple inheritance are multiple times easier to debug that a code with signals and helper methods, especially if it is an unknown code base.
Apart from Multiple inheritence CBVs by provide different methods to do dispatching, retrieving templates, handling different request types, passing template context variables, validating forms, and much more out of the box. These make code modular and hence maintainable.
Some views are best implemented as CBVs, and others are best implemented as FBVs.
If you aren’t sure which method to choose, see the following chart:
SOME WORDS FROM TWO SCOOPS
Tip Alternative Apporach - Staying With FBVs
Some developer prefer to err on the side of using FBVs for most views and CBVs only for views that need to be subclassed. That strategy is fine as well.
Class based views are excellent if you want to implement a fully functional CRUD operations in your Django application, and the same will take little time & effort to implement using function based views.
I will recommend you to use function based views when you are not going to implement any CRUD on your site/application means your intension is to simply render the template.
I had created a simple CRUD based application using class based views which is live. Visit http://filtron.pythonanywhere.com/view/ (will/won't be working now) and enjoy. Then you will know the importance of it.
I have been using FBVs in most of the cases where I do not see a real opportunity of extending views. As documented in the docs, I consider going for CBVs if the following two characteristics suit my use-case.
Organization of code related to specific HTTP methods (GET, POST, etc.) can be addressed by separate methods instead of conditional branching.
Object oriented techniques such as mixins (multiple inheritance) can be used to factor code into reusable components.
Function-Based Views(FBVs) are:
Easy to use but the
Code is not reusable by inheritance.
Recommended to use
Class-Based Views(CBVs) are:
Too much learning curve because it's really complicated
Code is reusable by inheritance.
Not recommended to use (FBVs are much beter)
So what exactly is Django implementing?
Seems like there are
Models
Views
Templates
Models = Database mappings
Views = Grab relevant data from the
models and formats it via templates
Templates = Display HTML depending on data given by Views
EDIT: S. Lott cleared a lot up with this in an edit to a previous post, but I would still like to hear other feedback. Thanks!
Is this correct? It really seems like Django is nowhere near the same as MVC and just confuses people by calling it that.
Django's developers have a slightly non-traditional view on the MVC paradigm. They actually address this question in their FAQs, which you can read here. In their own words:
In our interpretation of MVC, the “view” describes the data that gets presented to the user. It’s not necessarily how the data looks, but which data is presented. The view describes which data you see, not how you see it. It’s a subtle distinction.
So, in our case, a “view” is the Python callback function for a particular URL, because that callback function describes which data is presented.
Furthermore, it’s sensible to separate content from presentation – which is where templates come in. In Django, a “view” describes which data is presented, but a view normally delegates to a template, which describes how the data is presented.
Where does the “controller” fit in, then? In Django’s case, it’s probably the framework itself: the machinery that sends a request to the appropriate view, according to the Django URL configuration.