Proper way to handle PUT requests Django with forms - django

I have a web app that allows users to edit previously submitted data.
I'm currently processing PUT requests by manually updating the data.
I would like to use my forms to validate input but I run into the issue of the other required fields.
For instance, if a user updates a date field and I validate it with my form, it errors out as I'm missing other required fields like name, location, etc since the form was designed to be filled out all at once.
What is the best way to use my forms to validate input but conditionally allow required fields if the request is a PUT or POST with model Forms.

If you're getting errors for missing fields you're not using the modelform correctly, sounds like you are not passing it the existing instance to work on.
You need to use a pattern like this:
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404, render
def my_view(request, obj_id):
my_object = get_object_or_404(MyModel, pk=obj_id)
update_form = MyModelForm(instance=my_object, data=request.PUT or None)
if update_form.is_valid():
return HttpResponse(status=204) # empty success response
else:
return render(...) # render update_form.errors somehow
And be sure to include the object id in the url that you send your PUT requests to

Related

Sending form to another view django

I am building a website and I want various views that will ask the user to request a quote from our page. I want to keep the code as DRY as possible so I am writing a view quote which will receive the quote requests from various views and, if there is a validation error redirect back to the page that made the request. I managed to solve this using the super bad practice 'global variables'. I need a better solution, I would like redirecting to respective view with the current form so I can iterate through the form.errors. Here is my code:
def send_quote(request):
form = Quote(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
# do stuff when valid
return redirect('Support:thanks', name=name or None)
quote_for = request.POST['for_what']
global session_form
session_form = form
return redirect('Main:' + quote_for) # Here I would like to send form instead of storing in global variable`
You can use the HttpResponseRedirect function, and pass as argument the page that made the request.
return HttpResponseRedirect(request.META.get('HTTP_REFERER'))
All the META data is store on a dictionary, if you want to learn more check the documentation.
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/request-response/#django.http.HttpRequest.META
If you redirect to the referrer, form.errors will be empty, as redirection is always a GET request.
I can think of two solutions to your problem:
Submit forms asynchronously using JavaScript and so populate the errors
Make all the views containing the form support POST - one way to do this would be to create a base class that inherits from FormView
The second option is a typical way of handling forms in Django - you process both POST and GET inside the same view.
After two days of searching I finally found the answer. Instead of saving form in request.session I just save request.POST and then redirect. Here is the code:
def send_quote(request):
form = Quote(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
# do stuff when valid
return redirect('Support:thanks', name=name or None)
quote_for = request.POST['for_what']
request.session['invalid_form'] = request.POST
return redirect('Main:endview')
def endview(request):
session_form = request.session.pop('invalid_form', False)
if session_form:
form = Quote(session_form)
# render template again with invalid form ;)
Now I can repeat this with all the views I want and just change the what_for input of each form to match the respective view (Like I intended).

Create a User Profile or other Django Object automatically

I have setup a basic Django site and have added login to the site. Additionally, I have created a Student (Profile) model that expands upon the built in User one. It has a OneToOne relationship with the User Model.
However, I have yet not come right with forcing the user to automatically create a Profile the first time they log in. How would I make sure they are not able to progress through anything without creating this?
I have tried by defining the following in views:
def UserCheck(request):
current_user = request.user
# Check for or create a Student; set default account type here
try:
profile = Student.objects.get(user = request.user)
if profile == None:
return redirect('/student/profile/update')
return True
except:
return redirect('/student/profile/update')
And thereafter adding the following:
UserCheck(request)
at the top of each of my views. This however, never seems to redirect a user to create a profile.
Is there a best way to ensure that the User is forced to create a profile object above?
Looks like you're attempting to do something similar to Django's user_passes_test decorator (documentation). You can turn the function you have into this:
# Side note: Classes are CamelCase, not functions
def user_check(user):
# Simpler way of seeing if the profile exists
profile_exists = Student.objects.filter(user=user).exists()
if profile_exists:
# The user can continue
return True
else:
# If they don't, they need to be sent elsewhere
return False
Then, you can add a decorator to your views:
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import user_passes_test
# Login URL is where they will be sent if user_check returns False
#user_passes_test(user_check, login_url='/student/profile/update')
def some_view(request):
# Do stuff here
pass

Django web application Taking user input and processing it

I am building a web application using django. I need to take a string input from the user and process it using a method I have written myself. How to achieve this in Django? Here are the things I need to do
Get User Input userinput = (string) On start page
Put this string as an argument in my method MyMethod(userinput) and Run it in the backend
Display what MyMethod() returns on another page.
I suggest that you start from django tutorial: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/intro/tutorial01/
Basically, what you are going to need is form with one text field, HTML template that will render the form, view that will render HTML template with instance of a form when GET request arrives and call your MyMethod with value from form when POST request arrives and URL rule to call your view function on some URL.
Without additional data or any attempt to solve it and concrete problem you encounter - I can hardly offer more help.
You need to create a model with fields which you want to update by user input, then create a form based on this model. Then import this in a view and render it in a template
simple example:
forms.py:
class InputForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = YourModel
fields = ['fields_from_YourModel']
views.py:
from .forms import InputForm
def user_input(request):
input = CustomUser.objects.get(pk=request.user.pk)
if request.POST:
form = ProfileForm(request.POST, instance=input)
if form.is_valid:
form.save()
else:
form = ProfileForm()
return render(request, 'input.html', {'form':form})
Other steps more easier for beginner, you'll find examples in docs

Django - Extra context in django-registration activation email

I'm using django-registration for a project of mine.
I'd like to add some extra contextual data to the template used for email activation.
Looking into the register view source, I cannot figure out how to do it.
Any idea ?
From what I remember, you need to write your own registration backend object (easier then is sounds) as well as your own profile model that inherits from RegistrationProfile and make the backend use your custom RegistrationProfile instead (This model is where the email templates are rendered and there is no way to extend the context, so they need to be overwritten)
A simple solution is to rewrite the send_activation_email
So instead of
registration_profile.send_activation_email(site)
I wrote this in my Users model
def send_activation_email(self, registration_profile):
ctx_dict = {
'activation_key': registration_profile.activation_key,
'expiration_days': settings.ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS,
'OTHER_CONTEXT': 'your own context'
}
subject = render_to_string('registration/activation_email_subject.txt',
ctx_dict)
subject = ''.join(subject.splitlines())
message = render_to_string('registration/activation_email.txt',
ctx_dict)
self.email_user(subject, message, settings.DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL)
And I call it like this
user.send_activation_email(registration_profile)
I don't get what it is your problem but the parameter is just in the code you link (the last one):
def register(request, backend, success_url=None, form_class=None,
disallowed_url='registration_disallowed',
template_name='registration/registration_form.html',
extra_context=None)
That means you can do it from wherever you are calling the method. Let's say your urls.py:
from registration.views import register
(...)
url(r'/registration/^$', register(extra_context={'value-1':'foo', 'value-2':'boo'})), name='registration_access')
That's in urls.py, where usually people ask more, but, of course, it could be from any other file you are calling the method.

adding errors to Django form errors.__all__

How do I add errors to the top of a form after I cleaned the data? I have an object that needs to make a REST call to an external app (google maps) as a pre-save condition, and this can fail, which means I need my users to correct the data in the form. So I clean the data and then try to save and add to the form errors if the save doesn't work:
if request.method == "POST":
#clean form data
try:
profile.save()
return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse("some_page", args=[some.args]))
except ValueError:
our_form.errors.__all__ = [u"error message goes here"]
return render_to_response(template_name, {"ourform": our_form,},
context_instance=RequestContext(request))
This failed to return the error text in my unit-tests (which were looking for it in {{form.non_field_errors}}), and then when I run it through the debugger, the errors had not been added to the forms error dict when they reach the render_to_response line, nor anywhere else in the our_form tree. Why didn't this work? How am I supposed to add errors to the top of a form after it's been cleaned?
You really want to do this during form validation and raise a ValidationError from there... but if you're set on doing it this way you'll want to access _errors to add new messages. Try something like this:
from django.forms.util import ErrorList
our_form._errors["field_name"] = ErrorList([u"error message goes here"])
Non field errors can be added using the constant NON_FIELD_ERRORS dictionary key (which is __all__ by default):
from django import forms
errors = my_form._errors.setdefault(forms.forms.NON_FIELD_ERRORS, forms.util.ErrorList())
errors.append("My error here")
In Django 1.7 or higher, I would do:
form.add_error(field_name, "Some message")
The method add_error was added in 1.7. The form variable is the form I want to manipulate and field_name is the specific field name or None if I want an error that is not associated with a specific field.
In Django 1.6 I would do something like:
from django.forms.forms import NON_FIELD_ERRORS
errors = form._errors.setdefault(field_name, form.error_class())
errors.append("Some message")
In the code above form is the form I want to manipulate and field_name is the field name for which I want to add an error. field_name can be set to NON_FIELD_ERRORS to add an error not associated with a specific field. I use form.error_class() to generate the empty list of error messages. This is how Django 1.6 internally creates an empty list rather than instantiate ErrorList() directly.
You should raise the validationerror.
Why not put the verification within the form's clean method
class ProfileForm(forms.Form):
def clean(self):
try:
#Make a call to the API and verify it works well
except:
raise forms.ValidationError('Your address is not locatable by Google Maps')
that way, you just need the standard form.is_valid() in the view.
You're almost there with your original solution. Here is a base Form class I built which allows me to do the same thing, i.e. add non-field error messages to the form:
from django import forms
from django.forms.util import ErrorDict
from django.forms.forms import NON_FIELD_ERRORS
class MyBaseForm(forms.Form):
def add_form_error(self, message):
if not self._errors:
self._errors = ErrorDict()
if not NON_FIELD_ERRORS in self._errors:
self._errors[NON_FIELD_ERRORS] = self.error_class()
self._errors[NON_FIELD_ERRORS].append(message)
class MyForm(MyBaseForm):
....
All my forms extend this class and so I can simply call the add_form_error() method to add another error message.
I'm not sure how horrible of a hack this is (I've only really worked on two Django projects up until this point) but if you do something like follows you get a separate error message that is not associated with a specific field in the model:
form = NewPostForm()
if something_went_horribly_wrong():
form.errors[''] = "You broke it!"
If the validation pertains to the data layer, then you should indeed not use form validation. Since Django 1.2 though, there exists a similar concept for Django models and this is certainly what you shoud use. See the documentation for model validation.