Visibility of a Django formview in templates - django

Question

I've followed the tutorial here to implement a basic search function: https://learndjango.com/tutorials/django-search-tutorial
I'd like to extend that tutorial by making the search function visible on the results page, allowing for repeated search. However, when I do this I can't get the search form to show up on the search results page. The search button shows up, but not the field to provide input.
Relevant code:
home.html:
<div name="searchform">
<form action="{% url 'search_results' %}" method="get">
{{ form }}
<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>
</div>
{% block content %}
{% endblock %}
search_results.html:
{% extends home.html}
{% block content %}
<h1>Search Results</h1>
<ul>
{% for city in object_list %}
<li>
{{ city.name }}, {{ city.state }}
</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endblock %}
Views.py:
from django.db.models import Q
from django.views.generic import TemplateView, ListView, FormView
from .models import City
class HomePageView(FormView):
template_name = 'home.html'
form_class = SearchForm
class SearchResultsView(ListView):
model = City
template_name = 'search_results.html'
def get_queryset(self):
query = self.request.GET.get('q')
object_list = City.objects.filter(
Q(name__icontains=query) | Q(state__icontains=query)
)
return object_list
urls.py:
from django.urls import path
from .views import HomePageView, SearchResultsView
urlpatterns = [
path('search/', SearchResultsView.as_view(), name='search_results'),
path('', HomePageView.as_view(), name='home'),
]
forms.py:
from django import forms
class SearchForm(forms.Form):
q = forms.CharField(label='', max_length=50,
widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder': 'Search Here'})
)
Any advice on how I might troubleshoot this sort of issue (or if I'm blatantly doing something un-django-y) would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You're using ListView which is a Generic display view.
You need to use get method, then you can pass the form to make the search again and stay on the same page.
class SearchResultsView(View):
template_name = 'search_results.html'
form_class = SearchForm
def get(self, request):
form = self.form_class()
query = self.request.GET.get('q')
context = {}
context['form'] = form
context['cities'] = City.objects.filter(
Q(name__icontains=query) | Q(state__icontains=query)
)
return render(self.request, self.template_name, context)
You can achieve the same result with ListView but is better if you use other based view class.
You can check the doc. here

Answer 2

class HomePageView(FormView):
template_name = 'home.html'
form_class = SearchForm # This line!
Remember to also apply the form_class attribute to SearchResultsView, otherwise, no forms will be interpreted. The submit button only shows up because it's not a part of the rendered form.