How can I access data sent in a post request in Django? - django

Question

I have a form that is supposed to create a new 'Quote' record in Django. A 'Quote' requires a BookID for a foreign key.
This is my form
<form method="POST" action="{% url 'quotes:createQuote' %}">
{% csrf_token %}
<section>
<label for="q_text">Quote Text</label>
<input type="text" name="text" id="q_text" placeholder="Enter a Quote" style="padding-left:3px"> <br>
<label for="q_book">Book ID</label>
<input type="text" name="bookID" id="q_book" placeholder="Enter Book ID" style="padding-left:3px"> <br>
<label for="q_disp">Display Quote Now?</label>
<input type="radio" name="display" id="q_disp" value="True"> True
<input type="radio" name="display" value ="False">False <br>
<button value="submit">Submit</button>
</section>
</form>
And this is the method that it is targeting
def createQuote(request):
#b = get_object_or_404(Book, pk=request.bookID)
return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('quotes:index'))
Somewhere in that request argument I assume there is some sort of field that contains the bookID the user will pass in on the form. How do I get at that information?
Bonus points for anyone who can tell me some way I can visualise data like I might with console.log(some.collection) in Javascript

Answer 1

if request.method == "POST":
book_id = request.POST['book_id']
Assuming you're sure it's in there. Otherwise you'll need to verify/provide a default value like you would for a normal python dictionary.
As for visualising the data, do you mean printing it to the console? In which case if you're running the django runserver you can just do print some_data. If you want it formatted a little nicer, you can use pretty print:
import pprint
pp = pprint.PrettyPrinter()
pp.pprint(some_data)