Same random record across website - django

I am building a website that shows a different background every time a user enters it. This background is then used across the website with the same user and session.
So basically, a user entres the homepage, gets a background and that image won't change until the user closes the website or opens up a new page. I think you understand what I mean.
I know how to get a random record from the database using Django, but I'm not sure how to keep that record persistent across the website, because if I pull it on every view, I'll get a different image on different pages.
So my "index" view could be calling
bgimage = BackgroundImage.objects.random()
But then I have a problem. How can I get this random record unchanged across all the other views. Is that possible? Should I be looking into sessions, cookies?
Thank you!

you could use sessions - something like
if 'bgimage' not in request.session:
bgimage = BackgroundImage.objects.random()
request.session['bgimage'] = bgimage.pathtoimage

Context processor:
def bgimage(request):
if 'bg_image' not in request.session:
image = BackgroundImage.objects.random()
request.session['bg_image'] = image.file
return {'background_image' : request.session['image']}

Related

How do I check if a user has entered the URL from another website in Django?

I want an effect to be applied when a user is entering my website. So therefore I want to check for when a user is coming from outside my website so the effect isnt getting applied when the user is surfing through different urls inside the website, but only when the user is coming from outside my website
You can't really check for where a user has come from specifically. You can check if the user has just arrived on your site by setting a session variable when they load one of your pages. You can check for it before you set it, and if they don't have it, then they have just arrived and you can apply your effect. There's some good examples of how sessions work here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Server-side/Django/Sessions
There's a couple of ways to handle this. If you are using function based views, you can just create a separate util function and include it at the top of every page, eg,
utils.py
def first_visit(request):
"""returns the answer to the question 'first visit for session?'
make sure SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE set to False in settings for persistance"""
if request.session['first_visit']:
#this is not the first session because the session variable is used.
return False
else:
#This is the first visit
...#do something
#set the session variable so you only do the above once
request.session[first_visit'] = True
return True
views.py
from utils.py import first_visit
def show_page(request):
first_visit = first_visit(request)
This approach gives you some control. For example, you may not want to run it on pages that require login, because you will already have run it on the login page.
Otherwise, the best approach depends on what will happen on the first visit. If you want just to update a template (eg, perhaps to show a message or run a script on th epage) you can use a context processor which gives you extra context for your templates. If you want to interrupt the request, perhaps to redirect it to a separate page, you can create a simple piece of middleware.
docs for middleware
docs for context processors
You may also be able to handle this entirely by javascript. This uses localStorage to store whether or not this is the user's first visit to the site and displays the loading area for 5 seconds if there is nothing in localStorage. You can include this in your base template so it runs on every page.
function showMain() {
document.getElementByID("loading").style.display = "none";
document.getElementByID("main").style.display = "block";
}
const secondVisit = localStorage.getItem("secondVisit");
if (!secondVisit) {
//show loading screen
document.getElementByID("loading").style.display = "block";
document.getElementByID("main").style.display = "none";
setTimeout(5000, showMain)
localStorage.setItem("secondVisit", "true" );
} else {
showMain()
}

Flask session cookie reverting

I am sure I am probably being stupid but struggling to wrap my head around this one.
I have a flask website and I am setting up a checkout page for it so users can add their items to the cart etc. Everything was going great, I was able to add items to the cart, get a total etc (using sessions) however when I have tried to implement the ability for users to update the cart on the checkout page, when my form posts, the session data only survives the initial load. The print statement shows the data I am collecting is fine, and the session cookie is set initially, as everything updates, however the moment I then change page, it reverts to whatever it was before I made the update.
#views.route("/shopping-cart", methods=['GET','POST'])
def to_cart():
clear_cart = 'views.to_clear_cart'
if 'shopping' in session:
shopping_list = session['shopping']
sum_list = []
for quantity, price in shopping_list.values():
sum_list.append(quantity * price)
total = sum(sum_list)
if request.method == "POST":
new_quantity = int(request.form.get('quantity'))
product_id = request.form.get('issue')
unit_price = int(request.form.get('price'))
print(new_quantity, product_id, unit_price)
shopping_list[f'{product_id}'] = [new_quantity, unit_price]
return redirect(url_for('views.to_cart'))
return render_template("cart.html",
shopping_list=shopping_list,
total=total,
clear_cart=clear_cart,
)
else:
return render_template("cart.html",
clear_cart=clear_cart
)
I just do not really understand why it is not updating as from what I can tell, the code is running fine, and it does update, but then the session cookie just reverts itself to whatever it was before (using browser side cookies for this for testing).
Any help appreciated!!
After much confusion as everything seemed to be working absolutely fine after I rewrote this in about 5 different ways and printed half the app in the console, I finally found the answer and it is indeed me being an idiot.
It turns out if you modify a value in place rather than creating or deleting it does not automatically save the session state and you just need to state explicitly that it has been modified.
Turns out the answer was as simple as this line of code.
session.modified = True

How to make filtering non model data in flask-admin

I have to make dashboard like view in flask-admin that will use data retrieved from external API. I have already written a functions that get date ranges and return data from that range. I should use BaseView probably but I don't know how to actually write it to make filters work. This is example function that i have to use: charts = generate_data_for_dashboard('164', '6423FACA-FC71-489D-BF32-3A671AB747E3', '2018-03-01', '2018-09-01'). Those params should be chosen from 3 different dropdowns. So far I know only how to render views with pre coded data like this :
class DashboardView(BaseView):
kwargs = {}
#expose('/', methods=('GET',))
def statistics_charts(self):
user = current_user
company = g.company
offices = Office.query.filter_by(company_id=company.id)
self.kwargs['user'] = user
self.kwargs['company'] = company
charts = generate_data_for_dashboard('164', '6423FACA-FC71-489D-BF32-3A671AB747E3', '2018-03-01', '2018-09-01')
self.kwargs['chart1'] = charts[0]
self.kwargs['chart2'] = charts[1]
return self.render('stats/dashboard.html', **self.kwargs)
But I need some kind of form to filter it. In addition date filter dropdown should have dynamic options : current_week, last_week, current_month, last_month, last_year. Don't know where to start.
You should use WTForms to build a form. You then have to decide if you want the data to be fetched on Submit or without a reload of the page. In the former case, you can just return the fetched information on the response page in your statistics_charts view. But if you want the data to update without a reload, you'll need to use JavaScript to track the form field changes, send the AJAX request to the API, and then interpret the resulting JSON and update your dashboard graphs and tables as needed.
I have not used it, but this tutorial says you can use Dash for substantial parts of this task, while mostly writing in Python. So that could be something to check out. There is also flask_jsondash which might work for you.

Storing in Django Sessions

I have a ReactJS component inside a Django template, where a user clicks on a checkout button, posts the item_code and gets redirected to checkout:
onCheckout = () => {
fetch("/onCheckout/", {
method: "POST",
body: JSON.stringify({'item': this.props.item_info.code})
}).then(window.location.replace("/checkout"))
}
A Django view receives the request and stores it in a session.
def onCheckout(request):
if request.method == "POST":
items = request.session.get('items', [])
new_item = json.loads(request.body.decode('utf-8'))['item']
items.append(new_item)
request.session['items'] = items
I am having a issue with storing data in the session. After the first item gets stored correctly in the array, and I then checkout on a second item, the items array starts acting up:
(Pdb) items
['15130BC.ZZ.8042BC.01']
(Pdb) new_item
'5213G-001'
(Pdb) items
['15130BC.ZZ.8042BC.01']
(Pdb) items
['5213G-001']
If I try to access request.session['item'] from any other view function, I get a KeyError.
I am fairly new to Django, any help would be appreciated. Also, I would like to know if there are better alternatives to accomplish the above.
Sessions Config
settings.SESSION_ENGINE = 'django.contrib.sessions.backends.db'
settings.SESSION_CACHE_ALIAS = 'default'
settings.CACHES = {'default': {'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.locmem.LocMemCache'}}
Some reading on change detection for Django sessions: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/topics/http/sessions/#when-sessions-are-saved
Based on your code, it appears to me that the change detection should happen. However, let's try to brute force this, can you add the following line as the last line of your code: request.session.modified = True - see if this fixes your issue?
Update: some basic checks
Can you verify the following
Check if your db backend is configured priestly
If you want to use a database-backed session, you need to add 'django.contrib.sessions' to your INSTALLED_APPS setting. Once you have configured your installation, run manage.py migrate to install the single database table that stores session data.
Check if your session Middleware is enabled
Sessions are implemented via a piece of middleware. The default settings.py created by django-admin startproject has SessionMiddleware activated. To enable session functionality, edit the MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting and make sure it contains 'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware'.
Update 2: Test the session
Maybe modify a style existing endpoint as follows and see if you are able to store values and persist them in session :
test_keys = request.session.get('test_keys', [])
test_keys.append(random.randint())
request.session['test_keys'] = test_keys
return Response(request.session.get('test_keys', []))
You should see that each time you hit the api, you get a list with one new integer in it in addition to all past values. Lmk how this goes.

Manage multiple uploads with Flask session

I have a following situation. I created a simple backend in Flask that handles file uploads. With files received, Flask does something (uploads them), and returns the data to the caller. There are two scenarios with the app, to upload one image and multiple images. When uploading one image, I can simply get the response and voila, I'm all set.
However, I am stuck on handling multiple file uploads. I can use the same handler for the actual file upload, but the issue is that all of those files need to be stored into a list or something, then processed, and after doing that, a single link (album) containing all those images, needs to be delivered.
Here is my upload handling code:
#app.route('/uploadv3', methods=['POST'])
def upload():
if request.method == 'POST':
data_file = request.files["file"]
file_name = data_file.filename
path_to_save_to = os.path.join(app.config['UPLOAD_FOLDER'], file_name)
data_file.save(path_to_save_to)
file_url = upload_image_to_image_host(path_to_save_to)
return file_url
I was experimenting with session in flask, but I dont know can I create a list of items under one key, like session['links'], and then get all those, and clear it after doing the work. Or is there some other simpler solution?
I assume that I could probably do this via key for each image, like session["link1"], and so on, but that would impose a limit on the images (depending on how much of those I create), would make the code very ugly, make the iteration over each in order to generate a list that is passed to an album building method problematic, and session clearing would be tedious.
Some code that I wrote for getting the actual link at the end and clearing the session follows (this assume that session['link'] has a list of urls, which I can't really achieve with my knowledge of session management in Flask:
def create_album(images):
session.pop('link', None)
new_album = im.create_album(images)
return new_album.link
#app.route('/get_album_link')
def get_album_link():
return create_album(session['link'])
Thanks in advance for your time!
You can assign anything to a session including individual value or list/dictionary etc. If you know the links, you can store them in the session as follows:
session['links'] = ['link1','link2'...and so on]
This way, you have a list of all the links. You can now access a link by:
if 'links' in session:
for link in session['links']:
print link
Once you are done with them, you can clear the session as:
if 'links' in session:
del session['links']
To clarify what I have done to make this work. At the end, it appeared that the uploading images and adding them to the album anonymously had to be done "reversely", so not adding images to an album object, but uploading an image object to an album id.
I made a method that gets the album link and puts it in the session:
#app.route('/get_album_link')
def get_album_link():
im = pyimgur.Imgur(CLIENT_ID)
new_album = im.create_album()
session.clear()
session['album'] = new_album.deletehash
session['album_link'] = new_album.link
return new_album.link
Later on, when handling uploads, I just add the image to the album and voila, all set :)
uploaded_image = im.upload_image(path_of_saved_image, album=session['album'])
file_url = uploaded_image.link
return file_url
One caveat is that the image should be added to the "deleteahash" value passed as the album value, not the album ID (which is covered by the imgur api documentation).