Chapter 9 introduces generic views but leaves out some of the gory details. This appendix describes each generic view along with all the options each view can take. Be sure to read Chapter 9 before trying to understand the reference material that follows. You might want to refer back to the Book, Publisher, and Author objects defined in that chapter; the examples that follow use these models.
Most of these views take a large number of arguments that can change the generic view’s behavior. Many of these arguments work the same across a large number of views. Table D-1 describes each of these common arguments; anytime you see one of these arguments in a generic view’s argument list, it will work as described in the table.
Argument | Description |
---|---|
allow_empty | A Boolean specifying whether to display the page if no objects are available. If this is False and no objects are available, the view will raise a 404 error instead of displaying an empty page. By default, this is False. |
context_processors | A list of additional template-context processors (besides the defaults) to apply to the view’s template. See Chapter 10 for information on template context processors. |
extra_context | A dictionary of values to add to the template context. By default, this is an empty dictionary. If a value in the dictionary is callable, the generic view will call it just before rendering the template. |
mimetype | The MIME type to use for the resulting document. It defaults to the value of the DEFAULT_MIME_TYPE setting, which is text/html if you haven’t changed it. |
queryset | A QuerySet (i.e., something like Author.objects.all()) to read objects from. See Appendix C for more information about QuerySet objects. Most generic views require this argument. |
template_loader | The template loader to use when loading the template. By default, it’s django.template.loader. See Chapter 10 for information on template loaders. |
template_name | The full name of a template to use in rendering the page. This lets you override the default template name derived from the QuerySet. |
template_object_name | The name of the template variable to use in the template context. By default, this is 'object'. Views that list more than one object (i.e., object_list views and various objects-for-date views) will append '_list' to the value of this parameter. |
The module``django.views.generic.simple`` contains simple views that handle a couple of common cases: rendering a template when no view logic is needed and issuing a redirect.
View function: django.views.generic.simple.direct_to_template
This view renders a given template, passing it a {{ params }} template variable, which is a dictionary of the parameters captured in the URL.
Given the following URLconf:
from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.views.generic.simple import direct_to_template urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^foo/$', direct_to_template, {'template': 'foo_index.html'}), (r'^foo/(?P<id>\d+)/$', direct_to_template, {'template': 'foo_detail.html'}), )
a request to /foo/ would render the template foo_index.html, and a request to /foo/15/ would render foo_detail.html with a context variable {{ params.id }} that is set to 15.
View function: django.views.generic.simple.redirect_to
This view redirects to another URL. The given URL may contain dictionary-style string formatting, which will be interpolated against the parameters captured in the URL.
If the given URL is None, Django will return an HTTP 410 (“Gone”) message.
This URLconf redirects from /foo/<id>/ to /bar/<id>/:
from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.views.generic.simple import redirect_to urlpatterns = patterns('django.views.generic.simple', ('^foo/(?p<id>\d+)/$', redirect_to, {'url': '/bar/%(id)s/'}), )
This example returns a “Gone” response for requests to /bar/:
from django.views.generic.simple import redirect_to urlpatterns = patterns('django.views.generic.simple', ('^bar/$', redirect_to, {'url': None}), )
The list/detail generic views (in the module django.views.generic.list_detail) handle the common case of displaying a list of items at one view and individual “detail” views of those items at another.
View function: django.views.generic.list_detail.object_list
Use this view to display a page representing a list of objects.
Given the Author object from Chapter 5, we can use the object_list view to show a simple list of all authors given the following URLconf snippet:
from mysite.books.models import Author from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.views.generic import list_detail author_list_info = { 'queryset' : Author.objects.all(), 'allow_empty': True, } urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'authors/$', list_detail.object_list, author_list_info) )
Additionally, this view may take any of these common arguments described in Table D-1:
If template_name isn’t specified, this view will use the template <app_label>/<model_name>_list.html by default. Both the application label and the model name are derived from the queryset parameter. The application label is the name of the application that the model is defined in, and the model name is the lowercased version of the name of the model class.
In the previous example using Author.objects.all() as the queryset, the application label would be books and the model name would be author. This means the default template would be books/author_list.html.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will contain the following:
If the results are paginated, the context will contain these extra variables:
A Note on Pagination
If paginate_by is specified, Django will paginate the results. You can specify the page number in the URL in one of two ways:
Use the page parameter in the URLconf. For example, this is what your URLconf might look like:
(r'^objects/page(?P<page>[0-9]+)/$', 'object_list', dict(info_dict))
Pass the page number via the page query-string parameter. For example, a URL would look like this:
/objects/?page=3
In both cases, page is 1-based, not 0-based, so the first page would be represented as page 1.
View function: django.views.generic.list_detail.object_detail
This view provides a “detail” view of a single object.
Continuing the previous object_list example, we could add a detail view for a given author by modifying the URLconf:
from mysite.books.models import Author from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.views.generic import list_detail author_list_info = { 'queryset' : Author.objects.all(), 'allow_empty': True, } author_detail_info = { "queryset" : Author.objects.all(), "template_object_name" : "author", } urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'authors/$', list_detail.object_list, author_list_info), (r'^authors/(?P<object_id>d+)/$', list_detail.object_detail, author_detail_info), )
and either
or
slug_field: The name of the field on the object containing the slug. This is required if you are using the slug argument, but it must be absent if you’re using the object_id argument.
template_name_field: The name of a field on the object whose value is the template name to use. This lets you store template names in your data.
In other words, if your object has a field 'the_template' that contains a string 'foo.html', and you set template_name_field to 'the_template', then the generic view for this object will use the template 'foo.html'.
If the template named by template_name_field doesn’t exist, the one named by template_name is used instead. It’s a bit of a brain-bender, but it’s useful in some cases.
This view may also take these common arguments (see Table D-1):
If template_name and template_name_field aren’t specified, this view will use the template <app_label>/<model_name>_detail.html by default.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will be as follows:
Date-based generic views are generally used to provide a set of “archive” pages for dated material. Think year/month/day archives for a newspaper, or a typical blog archive.
Tip:
By default, these views ignore objects with dates in the future.
This means that if you try to visit an archive page in the future, Django will automatically show a 404 (“Page not found”) error, even if there are objects published that day.
Thus, you can publish postdated objects that don’t appear publicly until their desired publication date.
However, for different types of date-based objects, this isn’t appropriate (e.g., a calendar of upcoming events). For these views, setting the allow_future option to True will make the future objects appear (and allow users to visit “future” archive pages).
View function: django.views.generic.date_based.archive_index
This view provides a top-level index page showing the “latest” (i.e., most recent) objects by date.
Say a typical book publisher wants a page of recently published books. Given some Book object with a publication_date field, we can use the archive_index view for this common task:
from mysite.books.models import Book from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.views.generic import date_based book_info = { "queryset" : Book.objects.all(), "date_field" : "publication_date" } urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^books/$', date_based.archive_index, book_info), )
This view may also take these common arguments (see Table D-1):
If template_name isn’t specified, this view will use the template <app_label>/<model_name>_archive.html by default.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will be as follows:
date_list: A list of datetime.date objects representing all years that have objects available according to queryset. These are ordered in reverse.
For example, if you have blog entries from 2003 through 2006, this list will contain four datetime.date objects: one for each of those years.
latest: The num_latest objects in the system, in descending order by date_field. For example, if num_latest is 10, then latest will be a list of the latest ten objects in queryset.
View function: django.views.generic.date_based.archive_year
Use this view for yearly archive pages. These pages have a list of months in which objects exists, and they can optionally display all the objects published in a given year.
Extending the archive_index example from earlier, we’ll add a way to view all the books published in a given year:
from mysite.books.models import Book from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.views.generic import date_based book_info = { "queryset" : Book.objects.all(), "date_field" : "publication_date" } urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^books/$', date_based.archive_index, book_info), (r'^books/(?P<year>d{4})/?$', date_based.archive_year, book_info), )
This view may also take these common arguments (see Table D-1):
If template_name isn’t specified, this view will use the template <app_label>/<model_name>_archive_year.html by default.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will be as follows:
date_list: A list of datetime.date objects representing all months that have objects available in the given year, according to queryset, in ascending order.
year: The given year, as a four-character string.
object_list: If the make_object_list parameter is True, this will be set to a list of objects available for the given year, ordered by the date field. This variable’s name depends on the template_object_name parameter, which is 'object' by default. If template_object_name is 'foo', this variable’s name will be foo_list.
If make_object_list is False, object_list will be passed to the template as an empty list.
View function: django.views.generic.date_based.archive_month
This view provides monthly archive pages showing all objects for a given month.
Continuing with our example, adding month views should look familiar:
urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^books/$', date_based.archive_index, book_info), (r'^books/(?P<year>d{4})/?$', date_based.archive_year, book_info), ( r'^(?P<year>d{4})/(?P<month>[a-z]{3})/$', date_based.archive_month, book_info ), )
This view may also take these common arguments (see Table D-1):
If template_name isn’t specified, this view will use the template <app_label>/<model_name>_archive_month.html by default.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will be as follows:
View function: django.views.generic.date_based.archive_week
This view shows all objects in a given week.
Note
For the sake of consistency with Python’s built-in date/time handling, Django assumes that the first day of the week is Sunday.
urlpatterns = patterns('', # ... ( r'^(?P<year>d{4})/(?P<week>d{2})/$', date_based.archive_week, book_info ), )
This view may also take these common arguments (see Table D-1):
If template_name isn’t specified, this view will use the template <app_label>/<model_name>_archive_week.html by default.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will be as follows:
View function: django.views.generic.date_based.archive_day
This view generates all objects in a given day.
urlpatterns = patterns('', # ... ( r'^(?P<year>d{4})/(?P<month>[a-z]{3})/(?P<day>d{2})/$', date_based.archive_day, book_info ), )
This view may also take these common arguments (see Table D-1):
If template_name isn’t specified, this view will use the template <app_label>/<model_name>_archive_day.html by default.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will be as follows:
The django.views.generic.date_based.archive_today view shows all objects for today. This is exactly the same as archive_day, except the year/month/day arguments are not used, and today’s date is used instead.
urlpatterns = patterns('', # ... (r'^books/today/$', date_based.archive_today, book_info), )
View function: django.views.generic.date_based.object_detail
Use this view for a page representing an individual object.
This has a different URL from the object_detail view; the object_detail view uses URLs like /entries/<slug>/, while this one uses URLs like /entries/2006/aug/27/<slug>/.
Note
If you’re using date-based detail pages with slugs in the URLs, you probably also want to use the unique_for_date option on the slug field to validate that slugs aren’t duplicated in a single day. See Appendix B for details on unique_for_date.
This one differs (slightly) from all the other date-based examples in that we need to provide either an object ID or a slug so that Django can look up the object in question.
Since the object we’re using doesn’t have a slug field, we’ll use ID-based URLs. It’s considered a best practice to use a slug field, but in the interest of simplicity we’ll let it go.
urlpatterns = patterns('', # ... ( r'^(?P<year>d{4})/(?P<month>[a-z]{3})/(?P<day>d{2})/(?P<object_id>[w-]+)/$', date_based.object_detail, book_info ), )
You’ll also need either:
or:
This view may also take these common arguments (see Table D-1):
If template_name and template_name_field aren’t specified, this view will use the template <app_label>/<model_name>_detail.html by default.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will be as follows:
The django.views.generic.create_update module contains a set of functions for creating, editing, and deleting objects.
Note
These views may change slightly when Django’s revised form architecture (currently under development as django.newforms) is finalized.
These views all present forms if accessed with GET and perform the requested action (create/update/delete) if accessed via POST.
These views all have a very coarse idea of security. Although they take a login_required attribute, which if given will restrict access to logged-in users, that’s as far as it goes. They won’t, for example, check that the user editing an object is the same user who created it, nor will they validate any sort of permissions.
Much of the time, however, those features can be accomplished by writing a small wrapper around the generic view; see “Extending Generic Views” in Chapter 9.
View function: django.views.generic.create_update.create_object
This view displays a form for creating an object. When the form is submitted, this view redisplays the form with validation errors (if there are any) or saves the object.
If we wanted to allow users to create new books in the database, we could do something like this:
from mysite.books.models import Book from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.views.generic import date_based book_info = {'model' : Book} urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^books/create/$', create_update.create_object, book_info), )
Note
Notice that this view takes the model to be created, not a QuerySet (as all the list/detail/date-based views presented previously do).
post_save_redirect: A URL to which the view will redirect after saving the object. By default, it’s object.get_absolute_url().
post_save_redirect: May contain dictionary string formatting, which will be interpolated against the object’s field attributes. For example, you could use post_save_redirect="/polls/%(slug)s/".
login_required: A Boolean that designates whether a user must be logged in, in order to see the page and save changes. This hooks into the Django authentication system. By default, this is False.
If this is True, and a non-logged-in user attempts to visit this page or save the form, Django will redirect the request to /accounts/login/.
This view may also take these common arguments (see Table D-1):
If template_name isn’t specified, this view will use the template <app_label>/<model_name>_form.html by default.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will be as follows:
form: A FormWrapper instance representing the form for editing the object. This lets you refer to form fields easily in the template system — for example, if the model has two fields, name and address:
<form action="" method="post"> <p><label for="id_name">Name:</label> {{ form.name }}</p> <p><label for="id_address">Address:</label> {{ form.address }}</p> </form>
Note that form is an oldforms FormWrapper, which is not covered in this book. See http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/0.96/forms/ for details.
View function: django.views.generic.create_update.update_object
This view is almost identical to the create object view. However, this one allows the editing of an existing object instead of the creation of a new one.
Following the previous example, we could provide an edit interface for a single book with this URLconf snippet:
from mysite.books.models import Book from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.views.generic. import date_based book_info = {'model' : Book} urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^books/create/$', create_update.create_object, book_info), ( r'^books/edit/(?P<object_id>d+)/$', create_update.update_object, book_info ), )
And either:
or:
Additionally, this view takes all same optional arguments as the creation view, plus the template_object_name common argument from Table D-1.
This view uses the same default template name (<app_label>/<model_name>_form.html) as the creation view.
In addition to extra_context, the template’s context will be as follows:
View function: django.views.generic.create_update.delete_object
This view is very similar to the other two create/edit views. This view, however, allows deletion of objects.
If this view is fetched with GET, it will display a confirmation page (i.e., “Do you really want to delete this object?”). If the view is submitted with POST, the object will be deleted without confirmation.
All the arguments are the same as for the update object view, as is the context; the template name for this view is <app_label>/<model_name>_confirm_delete.html.
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