I have an app where user submitted data needs to go through a verification process before it shows up on the site. At the moment this means they cannot edit the item without removing it from the site (so our admins can check it's okay).
I'd like to write another model where I can store revisions. Basically three fields where I store the date submitted, a boolean saying if the user is ready for that revision to be considered and a third where I store all the changes (as a pickled/JSON dict).
The problem I have at the moment is I don't want to bombard the admins with a complete listing each time. I only want them to see the changed fields. This means I need a way of generating a list of which fields have changed when the user submits the edit ModelForm so I only save this data in the revision.
There are probably several ways of doing this but my post-pub-quiz brain is slightly numb and can't think of the best way. How would you do it?
In terms of where this would go, I'd probably write it as an abstract ModelForm-inheriting class that other forms use. I'd override save() to stop it writing the data directly back to database (I'd want to redirect it through this fancy new revisions model).
Come to think of it, is there an app that already does this generically?
Related
I have flow where users can create (model) forms. If form is valid, object gets saved and flow continues, but selection is in multiple pages. I need to keep current state of created object, which cannot be saved before it's completely valid.
One thing I can do is to always pass things around those views in the ModelForm to make sure, that user never loses data, but I also wanna make sure, that if he leaves the flow and comes back, he doesn't lose data, that he already entered previously.
That's why I decided I wanna save all the fields to session.
Is this correct approach?
How would you do this?
Where would you put this session logic?
What's best way of getting the fields from incomplete form to be saved?
Edit:
Please don't give me advice on how to use session, I am talking more about high level logic and architecture than specific implementation.
I should describe my flow a bit more. Model has 3 fields.
normal dropdown (foreign key referencing another model)
textfield
another foreign key, but this time not done by select, but it's own separate page with lots of filters to help user pick the right (foreign) model
Flow is not linear, because user can start in different parts of page.
Sometimes user can go to page, where he has first 2 fields + button "Browse", which takes you to selection page for 3rd field. Then after he selects field there, he comes back.
But sometimes he selects first this field and then comes to screen with 2 remaining fields, where he needs to fill those.
django-formtools offers a great way to do this using Form wizard.
The form wizard application splits forms across multiple Web pages. It
maintains state in one of the backends so that the full server-side
processing can be delayed until the submission of the final form.
More info here https://django-formtools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/wizard.html
to save in session:
request.session["variable_name"] = "value"
to get from session request.session["variable_name"]. sure you can use request.session.get("..") in both too
In my models, I have an Event class, a Volunteer class, and a Session class. The Session class has a foreign key field for an Event and a Volunteer, and is a unique coupling of both, as well as a date and time. Taken together, Volunteer and Event I think technically have a ManyToMany relationship.
Using the pre-packaged Django admin, I edit Volunteers and Events with their own admin.ModelAdmin classes respectively. Sessions are edited inline in the Events ModelAdmin.
When I add a new Session to an event in the admin interface, with a Volunteer, I need the Volunteer's hours field to be automatically updated, to reflect however many hours the newly added session lasted (plus all past sessions). Currently, I just have a calculate_hours function in the Volunteer model, which iterates over all sessions each time it is called and finds the sum of the hours. I tried to call it with a custom save function in Session, but it appears never to be called after the Event save function. I would try it in Event, but I have no way to isolate which Volunteers need their hours recalculated. The hours field IS updated if I manually go over to the Volunteer admin page, edit, and then save the Volunteer, but this is pretty unacceptable.
I see that there are many questions on SO about Django problems when saving inline objects on the admin site, particularly with ManyToMany fields. I'm not sure, after reading many of these questions, if what they say applies in my case--maybe I need to receive a signal somewhere, or include a custom save in a special place, or call save_model in my admin.ModelAdmin class... I just don't know. What is the best way to go about this?
Code can be found here: Models.py, Admin.py
First of all, the relationship you're describing is what called a ManyToMany "through" (you can read about it in the documentation here).
Secondly, I don't understand why you need the 'hours' to be a field at all. Isn't a function enough for this? why save it in the database in the first place? you can just call it every time you need it.
Finally, it seems to me you're doing a lot of extra work that I don't understand - why do you need the volunteer time boolean field? If you link a volunteer with an event isn't that enough to know that he was there? And what's the purpose of "counts_towards_volunteer_time"? I'm probably missing some of the logic here, but a lot of that seems wasteful.
I'd like to use Django's list_editable feature to allow admins of my site to quickly update a whole bunch of items at once, or even just to quickly update a single item. However, there are multiple admins on this site.
My main concern: What happens if one admin edits record A (B, C) while another admin edits record D (E, F), on the same page, from different computers? Is the information for all visible records submitted when each user clicks "Save", or are just the modified records submitted? In other words, will the second submitter override the first submitter's data, even though they were editing different records?
Less of a problem, and a problem I can live with: what happens if both users edit the same record? I assume that the second submission will override the first, even if Django has something in place to address my main concern, but it would be nice if Django somehow prevents mistakes here, too.
Django has no internal anti-collision system. But you can use django-reversion or hack into admin's get_changelist_forms and saving forms to manually merge changes of different users (or change form validation to fail if object is not the same, for example).
My form validators are pretty good, and if a form passes is_valid, all data should be ok to insert in the db. Should I still validate something on the db model? What else could there be validated on the db side? Because right now, except maybe for uniqueness ( which I can't do from my FormModel ), I can't think of anything else.
EDIT:
I did some work with Rails earlier, and there you would validate a form on the client side, using JS, and on the server side using model validations. I saw in django you can validate on the client side, using JS, and on the server side you have 2 validation checks: forms and models. This is what confused me.
All data should be validated in the database if possible whether you validate from the front end or not. The first validation should be the datatype, for instance using a date datatype will ensure that no nondates can ever get into your database. If you have relationships between tables these absolutely must be enforced at the database level. If the data must be unique, it is irresponsible to not put a unique index on it. If you have a distinct set of values that are the only ones allowed, then put them in a lookup table and add a forign key constraint to that table.
The reason why it is CRITICAL to do validations in the database itself is that the user interface will not be the only thing that interacts with the database (even if you think it will be). Other applications may do so, people will need to make data changes through imports or at a query window (to fix/change large amounts of data such as when client a buys client B and you need to convert all the data to client A). Also if you change the application interface you might lose the some of the critical data integrity checks in the rewrite. Data integrity is one of the most critical factors in database design and maintenance. If you can't count on data integrity, you have no data. I have never seen a database that lets this stuff be handled by the application that didn't lose data integrity over time. Remember the database will far outlast the current application. People will still be looking at this data for years to come. The application typically doesn't consider reporting which is where the data integrity problems tend to come to light. You don't want to have to explain why you have 10,000,000 in orders that you can't identify who they were shipped to, for instance.
If your data has a constraint that's always valid, you should force it in the model/database level (and optionally at the form level). Your DB can be input in multiple ways besides just a form where validation was checked. E.g., someone can go to the django shell to save models directly or someone could create/edit a model in the admin interface or some later designer creates a new form somehow, that doesn't validate correctly.
Granted this is only required if there are additional constraints on the data. Django automatically will validate for things like fields storing proper values, if you are using the correct field types. E.g., IntegerField validates to ensure it contains an integer, EmailField checks that its entered in the form of a valid email address, django.contrib.localflavor.us.models.PhoneNumberField is a US phone number, etc. Note, this only happens if your models have the proper fields (e.g., if you use CharFields for email addresses no validation can be performed.
But there may be other links between data structures, where you should write your own validation. E.g., if all custom orders requiring special instructions (and non-custom orders only sometimes have special instructions), you should check to enforce all custom orders have something in the special instructions field (and maybe have some minimum length).
EDIT: In response to your edit, the reason for three potential validations in django is straightforward -- different validations at different points for different reasons.
Client side (javascript/jquery) validation can't be trusted at all, and should only be given as a convenience for users almost as an afterthought (if you want a spiffy smooth interface). AFAIK, django doesn't have JS validation unless you use an external package like django-ajax-forms or something, but you don't trust that the validation is correct.
Second, there's a difference between form and model validation. One model may have multiple forms for different purposes. For example, you may have a blog with a Comment Model and allow two types of users to comment: signed in users, or anonymous users. The form for anonymous users may require giving a name/email before they comment, while the form for logged in users doesn't need those fields. The signed in user form, when processed in a view may automatically add the correct name and email addresses of the signed in user to the comment model before being saved.
In contrast, model validation always applies and will always be true at the database level, regardless of how they tried saving the data. If you want to make sure some condition always applies make sure it is at the DB level. (And you don't have to write put that validation in at the form level).
I am building a site where users can make changes to their publicaly displayed profile. However I need all changes to be approved by an admin before going live. Until the changes are approved their old profile will be displayed. In the admin there should be a list of profiles awaiting approval. It is preferable, but not required, to keep a history of versions.
I have looked at django-reversion, but don't think that will handle showing an old version while keeping a new one under-approval.
I'm looking for ways to achieve this with django...
Two from-the-hip ideas. How about...
Use reversion and add logic which auto-marks a profile as 'unapproved' on save() if the save is not performed by an administrator, then add a custom accessor to your code that gets the latest approved profile from the reversion archive.
Or, if reversion won't play nicely, have a 'current profile' and 'pending profile' for each user and update the FKs when the profile is approved...
This apps do exactly what you need
http://github.com/dominno/django-moderation
I've had some problems using django-moderation from dominno, which are:
Using a unique model for tracking changes in several others, with a GenericForeignKey reduces the amount of tables needed to monitor things, but it's a pain to manage. And I don't trush GenericForeignKeys for this type of task.
Deserialization of sandboxed values would invariably fail if I changed one field's name in the model. (for example, if I migrated a field change of name after monitoring it in moderation). It should at least be able to recover non bogus field values.
So I made my own app, which tackles the problems mentioned above.
It should give you what you're looking for.
https://github.com/artscoop/django-approval
It has auto approval mechanism, field selection (you can always ignore some fields, and put others to validation) and default values (for example, automatically set an object to hidden when it's created, so that it can be moderated without being visible in the first place)