Display models that includes certain values (basic search) - django

Question

I must start by saying that I am VERY new to Django (Python I know :) ).
Let me show you what I have so far and then I'll get into the issue.
The model:
class Machine(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=255, primary_key=True)
user = models.CharField(max_length=255)
mail = models.CharField(max_length=255)
datetime = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True, default="")
licenses = models.CharField(max_length=10000, blank=True, null=True, default="")
The view:
def home(request):
...
return render_to_response("inventory/home.html", {'machines': Machine.objects.all()})
and here is part of my HTML:
<fieldset class="module aligned ">
<div class="form-row field-name">
<div>
<label class="required" for="id_name">License:</label>
<input class="vTextField" id="id_license" maxlength="255" name="license" type="text" value="">
</div>
</div>
</fieldset>
<div class=results>
<table width="100%" border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#eeeeee">
<tr bgcolor='WhiteSmoke' style="color: 'black'">
<td><input type="checkbox" id="action-toggle" style="display: inline-block;"></td>
<td>Name</td>
<td>User</td>
<td>Mail</td>
<td>Registration date</td>
<td>Registered licenses</td>
</tr>
{% for machine in machines %}
{% if machine.datetime %}
<tr bgcolor='CCFF66'>
{% else %}
<tr bgcolor='FF6666'>
{% endif %}
<td class="action-checkbox">
<input class="action-select" name="_selected_action" type="checkbox" value="{{machine.name}}">
</td>
<td>{{ machine.name }}</td>
<td>{{ machine.user }}</td>
<td>{{ machine.mail }}</td>
<td>{{ machine.datetime|default:"N/A" }}</td>
<td>{{ machine.licenses|default:"N/A"|truncatewords:"5" }}</td>
</tr>
{% endfor %}
</table>
</div>
Here is the result:
As you can see above, currently all items (called machines) are being displayed but I would like to present only the machines with a certain license text.
So as soon as user starts typing into "license search field" only the items with that license would show up (I hope I have managed to explain the issue well enough).
At this point I don't really know where to start looking! I check some django tutorial but they don't get into stuff maybe this advanced!

Answer 1

You can perform the search at server side, for this follow steps
Put the License search box into a HTML form and add a submit button next to it.
On submit call a view which will get the value entered in `license' text box.
Perform a filter on table
return the results.
The first part of HTML will be changed to -
<fieldset class="module aligned ">
<div class="form-row field-name">
<div>
<form method="post">
<label class="required" for="id_name">License:</label>
<input class="vTextField" id="id_license" maxlength="255" name="license" type="text" value="">
<button type="submit">Search</button>
</form>
</div>
</div>
</fieldset>
And view will look something like this -
def home(request):
...
if request.POST:
license_text = request.POST.get('license', '')
machines = Machine.objects.filter(licenses__istartswith=license_text) #or you can use __in operator
else:
machines: Machine.objects.all()
return render_to_response("inventory/home.html", {'machines': machines})
No other changes are required. Code not tested but it should work