Background
I'm building a very large form to process customer submissions, so the end goal is to allow the user to resume the form where they left off at a later date. The form is fully functional using a FormWizard (NamedUrlSessionWizardView, actually). The Django docs mention a final save is accomplished in the done method, and leave this as an exercise to the reader. This works OK if the user completes this in one sitting, but not if you want to restore this later.
In my case, an email address is used to lookup past progress, and send a unique link to the user. This sets up the form and returns the user to where they left off. This works fine as long as your session is still valid, but not if it isn't (different computer, etc). What I would like to do is save the form data (these are ModelForms) after each step. I'll restore the user's state when they return.
Research
This answer is about the only solution I can find, but the solution is the same thing that the standard FormWizard.post() method does:
if form.is_valid():
# if the form is valid, store the cleaned data and files.
self.storage.set_step_data(self.steps.current, self.process_step(form))
self.storage.set_step_files(self.steps.current, self.process_step_files(form))
My Question
What is the proper way/place in a FormWizard to take action on, and save the form data out after each step?
You should be able to save the data directly to the ModelForm as you go along by simply writing it into the post method.
if self.steps.current == "form1":
data = self.request.POST["form1-response"]
user = CustomerModel.objects.get(id=self.request.user.id)
user.response = data
user.form_step = "form1"
user.save()
form_step, in this case, is simply a bookmark that you can use to direct the user back to the right step on their return. You should remove any already-saved fields from the done method, so they don't get overwritten.
If you do it this way, you may need to construct a dispatch method that rebuilds the management form when the user logs back in.
Alternatively, you might be able to get away with saving the user's session (or the relevant parts) into a session field on the model, then write a dispatch method for the SessionWizardView that injects the relevant information back in. I've never attempted it, but if you can get it to work, it might be preferable from an aesthetic standpoint depending on how many steps you have to cover.
Finally, if you can rely on your users not to clear their cookies and to use the same browser when they return, you can maybe cheat and set use persistent cookies.
Hopefully that will get you started. I'd be interested to see how you end up getting it to work. Good luck!
Related
I'm looking to post new records on a user triggered basis (i.e. workflow). I've spent the last couple of days reasearching the best way to approach this and so far I've come up with the following ideas:
(1) Utilize Django signals to check for conditions on a field change, and then post data originating from my Django app.
(2) Utilize JS/AJAX on the front-end to post data to the app based upon a user changing certain fields.
(3) Utilize a prebuilt workflow app like http://viewflow.io/, again based upon changes triggers by users.
Of the three above options, is there a best practice? Are there any other options I'm not considering for how to take this workflow based approach to post new records?
The second approach of monitoring the changes in the front end and then calling a backend view to update go database would be a better approach because processing on the backend or any other site would put the processing on the server which would slow down the site whereas second approach is more of a client side solution thereby keeping server relieved.
I do not think there will be a data loss, you are just trying to monitor a change, as soon as it changes your view will update the database, you can also use cookies or sessions to keep appending values as a list and update the database when site closes. Also django gives https errors you could put proper try and except conditions in that case as well. Anyways cookies would be a good approach I think
For anyone that finds this post I ended up deciding to take the Signals route. Essentially I'm utilizing Signals to track when users change a fields, and based on the field that changes I'm performing certain actions on the database.
For testing purposes this has been working well. When I reach production with this project I'll try to update this post with any challenges I run into.
Example:
#receiver(pre_save, sender=subTaskChecklist)
def do_something_if_changed(sender, instance, **kwargs):
try:
obj = sender.objects.get(pk=instance.pk) #define obj as "old" before change values
except sender.DoesNotExist:
pass
else:
previous_Value = obj.FieldToTrack
new_Value = instance.FieldToTrack #instance represents the "new" after change object
DoSomethingWithChangedField(new_Value)
I'm creating a Django website where users post details of used items they want to sell/barter.
When posting an item, the second-last step is to upload (upto 3) photos of the item on sale. The last step is to provide personal details (name, address, mobile). After this, the ad is finalized and goes into a "pending approval" queue.
I don't want to save photos to the DB until an advert is finalized. Hence I'm thinking I'll temporarily save a reference to the UploadedFile object retrieved from the form like so:
request.session["photo"] = form.cleaned_data.get('photo',None)
So far so good, or is this problematic? Assuming everything is correct so far.
Next, once ad is final, I'll save the images to my storage backend and pop photo from the request.session dictionary.
But what if the user drops out before finalizing the ad? How would I handle cases where a request.session["photo"] entry was created, but the user never finished the ad? Where are UploadedFile objects saved?
Basically, I need an efficient way to process 'orphaned' request.session image entries and related UploadedFile objects.
The main problem of using sessions is that they're not meant to handle a lot amount of data, and they could potentially loss information due to encoding, the RAM filling up, the framework's process of garbage collection, and such. That really dependes on how you store sessions objects, if you already solved this problem, go to step two.
Step One: You may want to make a separate model to store the image temporarily, storing the date and image file reference (through an ImageField), you can tell this model to upload the file to a temporary location on the Media directory using the upload_to parameter of the field.
Step Two: Set up a management command that filters the orphaned models from a certain date (images older than 10 minutes or so), and then deletes them along with the images (this is very important, as deleting the database record does not delete the file). The management command should be able to run without user intervention. Read more about management commands here.
Step Three: Set up your machine's Crontab or whatever you use to schedule processes, to run the management command in a daily or hourly basis depending on your needs.
I'm making a simple BBS application in Django and I want it so that whenever someone sees a post, the number of views on that post (post_view_no) is increased.
At the moment, I face two difficulties:
I need to limit the increase in post_view_no so that one user can only increase it once regardless of how many times the user refreshes/clicks on the post.
I also need to be able to track the users that are not logged in.
Regards to the first issue, it seems pretty easy as long as I create a model called 'View' and check the db but I have a feeling this may be an overkill.
In terms of second issue, all I can think of is using cookies / IP address to track the users but IP is hardly unique and I cannot figure out how to use cookies
I believe this is a common feature on forum/bbs solutions but google search only turned up with plugins or 'dumb' solutions that increase the view each time the post is viewed.
What would be the best way to go about this?
I think you can do both things via cookies. For example, when user visits a page, you can
Check if they have “viewed_post_%s” (where %s is post ID) key set in their session.
If they have, do nothing. If they don't, increase view_count numeric field of your corresponding Post object by one, and set the key (cookie) “viewed_post_%s” in their session (so that it won't count in future).
This would work with both anonymous and registered users, however by clearing cookies or setting up browser to reject them user can game the view count.
Now using cookies (sessions) with Django is quite easy: to set a value for current user, you just invoke something like
request.session['viewed_post_%s' % post.id] = True
in your view, and done. (Check the docs, and especially examples.)
Disclaimer: this is off the top of my head, I haven't done this personally, usually when there's a need to do some page view / activity tracking (so that you see what drives more traffic to your website, when users are more active, etc.) then there's a point in using a specialized system (e.g., Google Analytics, StatsD). But for some specific use case, or as an exercise, this should work.
Just to offer a secondary solution, which I think would work but is also prone to gaming (if coming by proxy or different devices). I haven't tried this either but I think it should work and wouldn't require to think about cookies, plus you aggregate some extra data which is noice.
I would make a model called TrackedPosts.
class TrackedPosts(models.Model):
post = models.ForeignKey(Post)
ip = models.CharField(max_length=16) #only accounting for ipv4
user = models.ForeignKey(User) #if you want to track logged in or anonymous
Then when you view a post, you would take the requests ip.
def my_post_view(request, post_id):
#you could check for logged in users as well.
tracked_post, created = TrackedPost.objects.get_or_create(post__pk=id, ip=request.ip, user=request.user) #note, not actual api
if created:
tracked_post.post.count += 1
tracked_post.post.save()
return render_to_response('')
I'm trying to store several unsaved model entries in the django session. I would like it to work something like this:
KEY = "FOOBAR"
def save_entry_to_session(new_entry, session):
items = deserialize(session.get(KEY))
items = append(new_entry)
session.put(KEY, serialize(items))
I have looked in to https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/serialization/ but the DeserializedObject didn't really play along and seemed like unnecessary overhead. Is there a better way to handle this? Pickle or is this unsafe?
Standard use case: save several items one at a time in the session -> save none, one or more items based on user actions.
I ended up using djangos model serializers, the deserializedObject was no obstacle. Using pickle would, in this instance, have been easier and safe (since it would never parse user submitted data) but I went with the safer choice to avoid risking exposure later.
I don't know if this is a new feature since you asked this question, but in Django 1.10 right now I am able to store an unsaved model in the session just by direct assignment, and it comes back out just fine without any extra work. Just request.session['thing'] = instance and then later instance = request.session['thing'].
I have a user input form here:
http://www.7bks.com/create (Google login required)
When you first create a list you are asked to create a public username. Unfortuantely currently there is no constraint to make this unique. I'm working on the code to enforce unique usernames at the moment and would like to know the best way to do it.
Tech details: appengine, python, webapp framework
What I'm planning is something like this:
first the /create form posts the data to /inputlist/ (this is the same as currently happens)
/inputlist/ queries the datastore for the given username. If it already exists then redirect back to /create
display the /create page with all the info previously but with an additional error message of "this username is already taken"
My question is:
Is this the best way of handling server side validation?
What's the best way of storing the list details while I verify and modify the username?
As I see it I have 3 options to store the list details but I'm not sure which is "best":
Store the list details in the session cookie (I am using GAEsessions for cookies)
Define a separate POST class for /create and post the list data back from /inputlist/ to the /create page (currently /create only has a GET class)
Store the list in the datastore, even though the username is non-unique.
Thank you very much for your help :)
I'm pretty new to python and coding in general so if I've missed something obvious my apologies.
Tom
PS - I'm sure I can eventually figure it out but I can't find any documentation on POSTing data using the webapp appengine framework which I'd need in order to do solution 2 above :s maybe you could point me in the right direction for that too? Thanks!
PPS - It's a little out of date now but you can see roughly how the /create and /inputlist/ code works at the moment here: 7bks.com Gist
I would use Ajax to do an initial validation. For example as soon as the user name input box loses focus I would in the background send a question to the server asking if the user name is free, and clearly signal the result of that to the user.
Having form validation done through ajax is a real user experience delight for the user if done correctly.
Of course before any of the data was saved I would definitely redo the validation server side to avoid request spoofing.
jQuery has a nice form validation plugin if you are interested. http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/validation.
In my career, I've never gotten around having to validate server side as well as client side though.
About the storing of the list (before you persist it to the datastore). If you use ajax to validate the user name you could keep the other fields disabled until a valid user name is filled in. Don't allow the form to be posted with an invalid user name!
That would perhaps solve your problem for most cases. There is the remote possibility that someone else steals the user name while your first user is still filling in his list of books. If you want to solve that problem I suggest simply displaying the list as you got it from the request from the user. He just sent it to you, you don't have to save it anywhere else.
Can you use the django form validation functionality (which I think should just abstract all this away from you):
http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/djangoforms.html
Search in that page for "adding an item" - it handles errors automatically (which I think could include non-unique username).
Warning: also a beginner... :)