I have 2 separate models, Post and Comment. I use DetailView to display Post contents and I want to use a CreateView to display comment creation form on the same page. What is the cleanest way to go about that?
The only thing that comes to mind is to use custom view which both gets an object and processes comment form, but this looks too dirty:
def post_detail(request, slug):
post = get_object_or_404(Post, slug=slug)
if request.POST:
form = CommentForm(request.POST)
# do comment form processing here
return render(request, "post/post_detail.html", {
"object": post, "comment_form": form})
Is there any clean way to do this using class based views? Or just some way to decouple post display code from comment processing code?
It is possible to combine DetailView and CreateView. You use a class for DetailView and another class for CreateView, then you create a new class that inherits from View. This new class has a get and post method. The get method calls the DetailView while the post method calls the CreateView. Take note to use reverse_lazy for the success_url in CreateView. So basically your code should look something like this:
class PostView(DetailView):
# your code
pass ;
class CommentView(CreateView):
def get_success_url(self):
return reverse_lazy('post_detail', kwargs={'pk': self.get_object(Post.objects.all().pk})
class PostCommentView(View):
def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
view = PostView.as_view()
return view(request, *args, **kwargs)
def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs) :
view = CommentView.as_view()
return view(request, *args, **kwargs)
So your urls.py will point to
PostCommentView
I did an override of get_success_url because it will try to go to the detail view of the new comment which doesn't exist and is not what you want to do. So the override will take you to the DetailView of the post instead.
There is an explanation in the documentation.
One option would be to use the DetailView for the Post and a templatetag to display the comment form. Have the comment form submit to a Comment CreateView that redirects to the DetailView on success.
That said, it might get a little ugly if the form is invalid. In a pinch you can always call a DetailView or its methods from one of the CreateView methods. But IMO that introduces more coupling rather than less. Or you could have a separate utility function that you can call from the CreateView to display the Post if the comment form has errors.
Another option would be to use AJAX to process the comment form (in the separate CreateView) instead of a new page load.
In the end, regardless of language or framework, there's going to be a limit to how much one can decouple a view that needs to display one object type and create another.
Related
I have several function based views in a django project, and I noticed that they have some repeated code, in fact, they all do the same thing:
def my_view(request):
form = MyForm(request.POST or None)
if requqest.POST:
if form.is_valid():
do_somethin()
and_something_else()
return redirect('another:page')
return render(request, 'my/tempalate.html', {'form': form})
The only thing that is different is the url where the user is redirected to in case of a succcesful form validation, the template, and maybe the form in the future.
Is it a good idea to use something like this to avoid that repetition?:
def a_view(request, success_redirect_url, template):
form = MyForm(request.POST or None)
if request.POST:
if form.is_valid():
do_something()
and_something_else()
return redirect(success_redirect_url)
return render(request, template, {'form': form})
and then reuse it in other views that have the repeated code? like:
def my_view1(request, url='another_page', template='my/template.html'):
return a_view(request, url, template)
Typically such patterns are defined in class-based views where one can use inheritance to override only some parts of the code flow.
Class-based views
Your view for example looks quite similar to a FormView [Django-doc]. Indeed, we can define a view with:
# app_name/views.py
from django.urls import reverse_lazy
from django.views.generic import FormView
class MyView(FormView):
template_name = 'my/template.html'
success_url = reverse_lazy('another_page')
form_class = MyForm
def form_valid(self, form):
do_somethin()
and_something_else()
return super().form_valid(form)
Here the class-based view has implemented a handler for a POST request that will first construct the form, then check if that form is valid, and if it is invalid rerender the template with the form that now contains the errors. It thus minimizes the amount of code that one has to write to handle a simple form.
Such views also explain clearly what they are doing. A CreateView for example explains by its name that it is used to create new objects, it will thus trigger the .save() method of the form it is operating on. A DeleteView on the other hand makes it clear that a POST request to that view will delete an object.
You can also override the attributes in the urls.py by specifying a value in the .as_view(…) [Django-doc] call:
# app_name/urls.py
from app_name.views import MyView
from django.urls import path
urlpatterns = [
# ⋮,
path('some/path/', MyView(template_name='other/template.html'), name='some-name'),
# ⋮
]
A class-based function thus acts as a template method pattern
Decorators
Another way to do this is to work with decorators that implement small pieces of logic that run before/after a call to the function-based view, and can alter the request/response, or decide to raise an error instead of calling the view.
For example the #require_http_methods(…) decorator [Django-doc] [GitHub] is implemented to first check if the method is one of the listed ones. This is implemented as:
def require_http_methods(request_method_list):
# ⋮
def decorator(func):
#wraps(func)
def inner(request, *args, **kwargs):
if request.method not in request_method_list:
response = HttpResponseNotAllowed(request_method_list)
log_response(
'Method Not Allowed (%s): %s', request.method, request.path,
response=response,
request=request,
)
return response
return func(request, *args, **kwargs)
return inner
return decorator
here the decorator thus checks if the request.method is a member of the request_method_list. If that is not the case, it will return a HTTP 405 response, and specify that that method is not allowed.
While Django offers a lot of decorators, most decorators have a mixin counterpart for a class-based views, and some are implemented already in the View class. For example if the View does not contains a get method, then it will return a HTTP 405 response, so here the required_http_method is not needed as a mixin/decorator for a class-based view.
Skeleton functions
You can implement a view function and use parameters instead to pass values. Usually however this will not be as flexible as a class-based view: it is rather easy to pass some parameters, but it is less useful to specify behavior in a pattern: in that case you need to pass a reference to a function, but then the question arises what parameters should be passed to that.
For example if we want to make a function that renders the template, we can work with a view that looks like:
from django.shortcuts import render
def render_some_template(request, parameter, context_generator, template='our/template.html'):
context = context_generator()
return render(request, template, context)
but perhaps the context_generator function should be called together with the parameter? or perhaps know what template will be rendered. This is one of the reasons why altering code flow is usually done with a class-based view, and less with a function-based view.
While a function-based view can work with a skeleton function, it is usually less exendible than the class-based counterpart. Django's builtin apps (the ones defined in the django.contrib module) are moving mainly towards class-based views, since it is easier to extend these.
You can do a lot better if just give a name to any button wich lunch this function:
<button name='lukaku'>
<button name='ronaldo'>
then into the view check for the name
if form.get('lukaku'):
do something
if form.get('ronaldo'):
do other thing
and so on. this can be limitless
I am back with more django questions on CBVs. This is about context_object_name. I have the following:
#method_decorator(verified_email_required, name='dispatch')
class Create(CreateView):
model = Profile
context_object_name = 'profileForm'
template_name = 'Members/template_includes/profile/form.html'
form_class = ProfileForm
success_url = '/Members'
form_title = "New Login Profile Information"
def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
return render(request, self.template_name, {
'profileTitle': self.form_title,
})
I am using PyCharm and can put a breakpoint in the template_name form and see what the environment knows about. I expect to see a dict named profileForm with all the form members in it plus profileTitle. Instead I see profileTitle as a standalone member. I do not see anything named profileForm or object_list and the expected form members are not being painted in the template.
I suppose that I understand that the extra content in the return render will pass a "naked" profileTitle but I did expect that the default get behaviour would pull in the form info.
Have I missed the point?
You've overridden the get method in your CreateView-subclass and in doing so, you've bypassed the included functionality that a CreateView does to fill your context. If you take a look here you can see that a CreateView would otherwise call return self.render_to_response(self.get_context_data()) (because it inherits from ProcessFormView) and it's within get_context_data() (ref) that those included context variables are set up.
I've been learning Django and one source of confusion I have is with class based views and when to override the get method. I've looked through the documentation and it explains what get does but it doesn't explain when I should override get.
I originally created a view this way:
class ExampleView(generic.ListView):
template_name = 'ppm/ppm.html'
paginate_by = 5
def get(self, request):
profiles_set = EmployeeProfile.objects.all()
context = {
'profiles_set': profiles_set,
'title': 'Employee Profiles'
}
return render(request, self.template_name, context)
But I was recently told that my code was simple of enough for the default implementation, and that all I needed was this:
class ExampleView(generic.ListView):
model = EmployeeProfile
template_name = 'ppm/ppm.html'
So my Question is this: In what scenario/circumstance should I override the get method?
If you are using the builtin generic views, then you should rarely have to override get(). You'll end up either duplicating lots of functionality, or break features of the view.
For example, the paginate_by option will no longer work in your view, because you are not slicing the queryset in your get() method.
If you are using a generic class based view like ListView, you should try to override specific attributes or methods where possible, rather than overriding get().
The advantage of your view which overrides get() is that it's very clear what it does. You can see that the view fetches a queryset, includes it in a context, then renders the templates. You don't need to know about ListView to understand the view.
If you like the explicitness of overriding get() subclass View instead. You aren't using any of the features of ListView, so it doesn't make sense to subclass it.
from django.views.generic import View
class ExampleView(View):
template_name = 'ppm/ppm.html'
def get(self, request):
...
You should override the get method when you specifically want to do something other than the default view does. In this case, your code isn't doing anything other than rendering the template with the list of all EmployeeProfile objects, which is exactly what the generic ListView would do.
You might override it if you want to do something more complicated. For example, maybe you want to filter based on a URL parameter:
class ExampleView(generic.ListView):
template_name = 'ppm/ppm.html'
def get(self, request):
manager = request.GET.get('manager', None)
if manager:
profiles_set = EmployeeProfile.objects.filter(manager=manager)
else:
profiles_set = EmployeeProfile.objects.all()
context = {
'profiles_set': profiles_set,
'title': 'Employee Profiles'
}
return render(request, self.template_name, context)
I have a created a view class "class Demo", which has 3 functions
def update_time()
def get_context()
def before_response()
urls.py : url(r'^demo/$', Demo.as_view(),name='demo_class'),
When i'll enter url /demo/ how will it determine which function to call from "class Demo" ?
Because Django’s URL resolver expects to send the request and associated arguments to a callable function, not a class, class-based views have an as_view() class method which serves as the callable entry point to your class. The as_view entry point creates an instance of your class and calls its dispatch() method. dispatch looks at the request to determine whether it is a GET, POST, etc, and relays the request to a matching method if one is defined, or raises HttpResponseNotAllowed if not.
just read the docs
Basically class based views are recommended when you need to handle both get and post requests at one point. For example in get method of class Register, you can render the registration form and in its post method, you can handle the form submission. If its a get request it will automatically invoke the get() method in the class, same for post request. Also you can write any common code in the dispatch() method which will be invoked for every request.eg:
class Register(View):
def dispatch(self, *args, **kwargs):
'''
common code here
'''
return super(Register, self).dispatch(*args, **kwargs)
def get(self, request):
registration_form = RegistrationForm()
return render(request, 'new.html', { 'form': registration_form })
def post(self, request):
registration_form = RegistrationForm(request.POST or None)
if registration_form.is_valid():
#save form
return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('success-show'))
return render(request,new.html', { 'form': registration_form })
For references you can check this website.
You need to subclass a class based views, and depending on that it will have one or another method.
For example TemplateView renders a template you pass in the template_name attribute.
All class based views care about is that the attributes needed to work properly are setted. That is done via different methods. You can check the django's documentation for specifics.
For example, if you want to render a form in your template view, you will need to pass the form in the context, so you can override get_context_data() like:
def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
context = super(DemoClass, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)
context['form'] = MyForm()
return context
There are different methods to handle different things, like querysets, objects, etc.
They are not complicated, but they are specific. If a class based view does not fit what you need, it may be easier to implement the functionality from a more general view (View, TemplateView) than forcing a more specific one to do things it is not intended for.
slightly change the url
add numbers one to three in url and put the condition in your view.
Ex.
url(r'^abc/(?P<newid>.*)$', 'class_demo'),
so your url will be like abc/1 or abc/2 or abc/3
view
def class_demo(requests, newid):
if newid==1:
update_time()
elif newid==2:
get_context()
Accessing GET data from a plain HTML form in a Class-Based TemplateView is straightforward. I'm currently doing it like the following:
class SomeView(TemplateView):
template_name = 'some-template.html'
def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
if request.GET:
# do things...
context = self.get_context_data(**kwargs)
return self.render_to_response(context)
But I'm wondering how I can access POST data. I have tried using get_context_data() to check for posted form data...but have been unsuccessful.
Question: Can POSTed form data from a plain HTML form (not a Django form) be accessed via a TemplateView?
There's no difference in the way the data is sent between a Django form and anything else: it's in request.POST as always.
Naturally, you need to define the post method, rather than get.