Django Views - index and template

Posted under » Django on 6 May 2021

A view is a “type” of Web page in your Django application that generally serves a specific function and has a specific template. This is different from Cakephp or Symfony where a view is a template. A view is like a controller in Django.

Now let’s add a few more views to polls/views.py.

def detail(request, question_id):
    return HttpResponse("You're looking at question %s." % question_id)

def results(request, question_id):
    response = "You're looking at the results of question %s."
    return HttpResponse(response % question_id)

def vote(request, question_id):
    return HttpResponse("You're voting on question %s." % question_id)

Wire these new views into the polls.urls module by adding the following path() calls:

from django.urls import path

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    # ex: /polls/
    path('', views.index, name='index'),
    # ex: /polls/5/
    path('<int:question_id>/', views.detail, name='detail'),
    # ex: /polls/5/results/
    path('<int:question_id>/results/', views.results, name='results'),
    # ex: /polls/5/vote/
    path('<int:question_id>/vote/', views.vote, name='vote'),
]

Take a look in your browser, at “/polls/34/”. It’ll run the detail() method and display whatever ID you provide in the URL. Try “/polls/34/results/” and “/polls/34/vote/” too – these will display the placeholder results and voting pages.

Take note that if you type “/polls/34” you will get 404 error. You will need to put the trailing /.

Now lets change the index page to something meaningful. There’s a problem here, though: the page’s design was hard-coded in the view.

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template import loader

from .models import Question

def index(request):
    latest_question_list = Question.objects.order_by('-pub_date')[:5]
    template = loader.get_template('polls/index.html')
    context = {
        'latest_question_list': latest_question_list,
    }
    return HttpResponse(template.render(context, request))

or a shortcut

from django.shortcuts import render
from .models import Question

def index(request):
    latest_question_list = Question.objects.order_by('-pub_date')[:5]
    context = {'latest_question_list': latest_question_list}
    return render(request, 'polls/index.html', context)

So let’s use Django’s template system to separate the design from Python by creating a template that the view can use.

Put the following code in that template "polls/templates/polls/index.html".

{% if latest_question_list %}
    <ul>
    {% for question in latest_question_list %}
        <li><a href="/polls/{{ question.id }}/">{{ question.question_text }}</a></li>
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>
{% else %}
    <p>No polls are available.
{% endif %}

The problem with this hardcoded, tightly-coupled approach is that it becomes challenging to change URLs on projects with a lot of templates. Read the solution in URL namespace

Now let's tackle the details page.