path: root/docs/intro/tutorial03.txt

=====================================
Writing your first Django app, part 3
=====================================

This tutorial begins where :doc:`Tutorial 2 </intro/tutorial02>` left off. We're
continuing the Web-poll application and will focus on creating the public
interface -- "views."

Overview
========

A view is a "type" of Web page in your Django application that generally serves
a specific function and has a specific template. For example, in a blog
application, you might have the following views:

* Blog homepage -- displays the latest few entries.

* Entry "detail" page -- permalink page for a single entry.

* Year-based archive page -- displays all months with entries in the
  given year.

* Month-based archive page -- displays all days with entries in the
  given month.

* Day-based archive page -- displays all entries in the given day.

* Comment action -- handles posting comments to a given entry.

In our poll application, we'll have the following four views:

* Question "index" page -- displays the latest few questions.

* Question "detail" page -- displays a question text, with no results but
  with a form to vote.

* Question "results" page -- displays results for a particular question.

* Vote action -- handles voting for a particular choice in a particular
  question.

In Django, web pages and other content are delivered by views. Each view is
represented by a simple Python function (or method, in the case of class-based
views). Django will choose a view by examining the URL that's requested (to be
precise, the part of the URL after the domain name).

Now in your time on the web you may have come across such beauties as
"ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?sid=&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&gid=A6CD4967199A42D9B65B1B".
You will be pleased to know that Django allows us much more elegant
*URL patterns* than that.

A URL pattern is simply the general form of a URL - for example:
``/newsarchive/<year>/<month>/``.

To get from a URL to a view, Django uses what are known as 'URLconfs'. A
URLconf maps URL patterns (described as regular expressions) to views.

This tutorial provides basic instruction in the use of URLconfs, and you can
refer to :mod:`django.core.urlresolvers` for more information.

Writing more views
==================

Now let's add a few more views to ``polls/views.py``. These views are
slightly different, because they take an argument:

.. snippet::
    :filename: 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
:func:`~django.conf.urls.url` calls:

.. snippet::
    :filename: polls/urls.py

    from django.conf.urls import url

    from . import views

    urlpatterns = [
        # ex: /polls/
        url(r'^$', views.index, name='index'),
        # ex: /polls/5/
        url(r'^(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)/$', views.detail, name='detail'),
        # ex: /polls/5/results/
        url(r'^(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)/results/$', views.results, name='results'),
        # ex: /polls/5/vote/
        url(r'^(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)/vote/$', 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.

When somebody requests a page from your Web site -- say, "/polls/34/", Django
will load the ``mysite.urls`` Python module because it's pointed to by the
:setting:`ROOT_URLCONF` setting. It finds the variable named ``urlpatterns``
and traverses the regular expressions in order. The
:func:`~django.conf.urls.include` functions we are using simply reference
other URLconfs. Note that the regular expressions for the
:func:`~django.conf.urls.include` functions don't have a ``$`` (end-of-string
match character) but rather a trailing slash. Whenever Django encounters
:func:`~django.conf.urls.include`, it chops off whatever part of the URL
matched up to that point and sends the remaining string to the included
URLconf for further processing.

The idea behind :func:`~django.conf.urls.include` is to make it easy to
plug-and-play URLs. Since polls are in their own URLconf
(``polls/urls.py``), they can be placed under "/polls/", or under
"/fun_polls/", or under "/content/polls/", or any other path root, and the
app will still work.

Here's what happens if a user goes to "/polls/34/" in this system:

* Django will find the match at ``'^polls/'``

* Then, Django will strip off the matching text (``"polls/"``) and send the
  remaining text -- ``"34/"`` -- to the 'polls.urls' URLconf for
  further processing which matches ``r'^(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)/$'`` resulting in a
  call to the ``detail()`` view like so::

    detail(request=<HttpRequest object>, question_id='34')

The ``question_id='34'`` part comes from ``(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)``. Using parentheses
around a pattern "captures" the text matched by that pattern and sends it as an
argument to the view function; ``?P<question_id>`` defines the name that will
be used to identify the matched pattern; and ``[0-9]+`` is a regular expression to
match a sequence of digits (i.e., a number).

Because the URL patterns are regular expressions, there really is no limit on
what you can do with them. And there's no need to add URL cruft such as
``.html`` -- unless you want to, in which case you can do something like
this::

    url(r'^polls/latest\.html$', views.index),

But, don't do that. It's silly.

Write views that actually do something
======================================

Each view is responsible for doing one of two things: returning an
:class:`~django.http.HttpResponse` object containing the content for the
requested page, or raising an exception such as :exc:`~django.http.Http404`. The
rest is up to you.

Your view can read records from a database, or not. It can use a template
system such as Django's -- or a third-party Python template system -- or not.
It can generate a PDF file, output XML, create a ZIP file on the fly, anything
you want, using whatever Python libraries you want.

All Django wants is that :class:`~django.http.HttpResponse`. Or an exception.

Because it's convenient, let's use Django's own database API, which we covered
in :doc:`Tutorial 2 </intro/tutorial02>`. Here's one stab at a new ``index()``
view, which displays the latest 5 poll questions in the system, separated by
commas, according to publication date:

.. snippet::
    :filename: polls/views.py

    from django.http import HttpResponse

    from .models import Question


    def index(request):
        latest_question_list = Question.objects.order_by('-pub_date')[:5]
        output = ', '.join([q.question_text for q in latest_question_list])
        return HttpResponse(output)

    # Leave the rest of the views (detail, results, vote) unchanged

There's a problem here, though: the page's design is hard-coded in the view. If
you want to change the way the page looks, you'll have to edit this Python code.
So let's use Django's template system to separate the design from Python by
creating a template that the view can use.

First, create a directory called ``templates`` in your ``polls`` directory.
Django will look for templates in there.

Your project's :setting:`TEMPLATES` setting describes how Django will load and
render templates. The default settings file configures a ``DjangoTemplates``
backend whose :setting:`APP_DIRS <TEMPLATES-APP_DIRS>` option is set to
``True``. By convention ``DjangoTemplates`` looks for a "templates"
subdirectory in each of the :setting:`INSTALLED_APPS`.

Within the ``templates`` directory you have just created, create another
directory called ``polls``, and within that create a file called
``index.html``. In other words, your template should be at
``polls/templates/polls/index.html``. Because of how the ``app_directories``
template loader works as described above, you can refer to this template within
Django simply as ``polls/index.html``.

.. admonition:: Template namespacing

    Now we *might* be able to get away with putting our templates directly in
    ``polls/templates`` (rather than creating another ``polls`` subdirectory),
    but it would actually be a bad idea. Django will choose the first template
    it finds whose name matches, and if you had a template with the same name
    in a *different* application, Django would be unable to distinguish between
    them. We need to be able to point Django at the right one, and the easiest
    way to ensure this is by *namespacing* them. That is, by putting those
    templates inside *another* directory named for the application itself.

Put the following code in that template:

.. snippet:: html+django
    :filename: 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.</p>
    {% endif %}

Now let's update our ``index`` view in ``polls/views.py`` to use the template:

.. snippet::
    :filename: polls/views.py

    from django.http import HttpResponse
    from django.template import RequestContext, 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 = RequestContext(request, {
            'latest_question_list': latest_question_list,
        })
        return HttpResponse(template.render(context))

That code loads the template called  ``polls/index.html`` and passes it a
context. The context is a dictionary mapping template variable names to Python
objects.

Load the page by pointing your browser at "/polls/", and you should see a
bulleted-list containing the "What's up" question from :doc:`Tutorial 2
</intro/tutorial02>`. The link points to the question's detail page.

A shortcut: :func:`~django.shortcuts.render`
--------------------------------------------

It's a very common idiom to load a template, fill a context and return an
:class:`~django.http.HttpResponse` object with the result of the rendered
template. Django provides a shortcut. Here's the full ``index()`` view,
rewritten:

.. snippet::
    :filename: polls/views.py

    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)

Note that once we've done this in all these views, we no longer need to import
:mod:`~django.template.loader`, :class:`~django.template.RequestContext` and
:class:`~django.http.HttpResponse` (you'll want to keep ``HttpResponse`` if you
still have the stub methods for ``detail``, ``results``, and ``vote``).

The :func:`~django.shortcuts.render` function takes the request object as its
first argument, a template name as its second argument and a dictionary as its
optional third argument. It returns an :class:`~django.http.HttpResponse`
object of the given template rendered with the given context.

Raising a 404 error
===================

Now, let's tackle the question detail view -- the page that displays the question text
for a given poll. Here's the view:

.. snippet::
    :filename: polls/views.py

    from django.http import Http404
    from django.shortcuts import render

    from .models import Question
    # ...
    def detail(request, question_id):
        try:
            question = Question.objects.get(pk=question_id)
        except Question.DoesNotExist:
            raise Http404("Question does not exist")
        return render(request, 'polls/detail.html', {'question': question})

The new concept here: The view raises the :exc:`~django.http.Http404` exception
if a question with the requested ID doesn't exist.

We'll discuss what you could put in that ``polls/detail.html`` template a bit
later, but if you'd like to quickly get the above example working, a file
containing just:

.. snippet:: html+django
    :filename: polls/templates/polls/detail.html

    {{ question }}

will get you started for now.

A shortcut: :func:`~django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404`
-------------------------------------------------------

It's a very common idiom to use :meth:`~django.db.models.query.QuerySet.get`
and raise :exc:`~django.http.Http404` if the object doesn't exist. Django
provides a shortcut. Here's the ``detail()`` view, rewritten:

.. snippet::
    :filename: polls/views.py

    from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404, render

    from .models import Question
    # ...
    def detail(request, question_id):
        question = get_object_or_404(Question, pk=question_id)
        return render(request, 'polls/detail.html', {'question': question})

The :func:`~django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404` function takes a Django model
as its first argument and an arbitrary number of keyword arguments, which it
passes to the :meth:`~django.db.models.query.QuerySet.get` function of the
model's manager. It raises :exc:`~django.http.Http404` if the object doesn't
exist.

.. admonition:: Philosophy

    Why do we use a helper function :func:`~django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404`
    instead of automatically catching the
    :exc:`~django.core.exceptions.ObjectDoesNotExist` exceptions at a higher
    level, or having the model API raise :exc:`~django.http.Http404` instead of
    :exc:`~django.core.exceptions.ObjectDoesNotExist`?

    Because that would couple the model layer to the view layer. One of the
    foremost design goals of Django is to maintain loose coupling. Some
    controlled coupling is introduced in the :mod:`django.shortcuts` module.

There's also a :func:`~django.shortcuts.get_list_or_404` function, which works
just as :func:`~django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404` -- except using
:meth:`~django.db.models.query.QuerySet.filter` instead of
:meth:`~django.db.models.query.QuerySet.get`. It raises
:exc:`~django.http.Http404` if the list is empty.

Use the template system
=======================

Back to the ``detail()`` view for our poll application. Given the context
variable ``question``, here's what the ``polls/detail.html`` template might look
like:

.. snippet:: html+django
    :filename: polls/templates/polls/detail.html

    <h1>{{ question.question_text }}</h1>
    <ul>
    {% for choice in question.choice_set.all %}
        <li>{{ choice.choice_text }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>

The template system uses dot-lookup syntax to access variable attributes. In
the example of ``{{ question.question_text }}``, first Django does a dictionary lookup
on the object ``question``. Failing that, it tries an attribute lookup -- which
works, in this case. If attribute lookup had failed, it would've tried a
list-index lookup.

Method-calling happens in the :ttag:`{% for %}<for>` loop:
``question.choice_set.all`` is interpreted as the Python code
``question.choice_set.all()``, which returns an iterable of ``Choice`` objects and is
suitable for use in the :ttag:`{% for %}<for>` tag.

See the :doc:`template guide </topics/templates>` for more about templates.

Removing hardcoded URLs in templates
====================================

Remember, when we wrote the link to a question in the ``polls/index.html``
template, the link was partially hardcoded like this:

.. code-block:: html+django

    <li><a href="/polls/{{ question.id }}/">{{ question.question_text }}</a></li>

The problem with this hardcoded, tightly-coupled approach is that it becomes
challenging to change URLs on projects with a lot of templates. However, since
you defined the name argument in the :func:`~django.conf.urls.url` functions in
the ``polls.urls`` module, you can remove a reliance on specific URL paths
defined in your url configurations by using the ``{% url %}`` template tag:

.. code-block:: html+django

    <li><a href="{% url 'detail' question.id %}">{{ question.question_text }}</a></li>

The way this works is by looking up the URL definition as specified in the
``polls.urls`` module. You can see exactly where the URL name of 'detail' is
defined below::

    ...
    # the 'name' value as called by the {% url %} template tag
    url(r'^(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)/$', views.detail, name='detail'),
    ...

If you want to change the URL of the polls detail view to something else,
perhaps to something like ``polls/specifics/12/`` instead of doing it in the
template (or templates) you would change it in ``polls/urls.py``::

    ...
    # added the word 'specifics'
    url(r'^specifics/(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)/$', views.detail, name='detail'),
    ...

Namespacing URL names
======================

The tutorial project has just one app, ``polls``. In real Django projects,
there might be five, ten, twenty apps or more. How does Django differentiate
the URL names between them? For example, the ``polls`` app has a ``detail``
view, and so might an app on the same project that is for a blog. How does one
make it so that Django knows which app view to create for a url when using the
``{% url %}`` template tag?

The answer is to add namespaces to your  URLconf. In the ``polls/urls.py``
file, go ahead and add an ``app_name`` to set the application namespace:

.. snippet::
    :filename: polls/urls.py

    from django.conf.urls import url

    app_name = 'polls'
    urlpatterns = [
        url(r'^$', views.index, name='index'),
        url(r'^(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)/$', views.detail, name='detail'),
        url(r'^(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)/results/$', views.results, name='results'),
        url(r'^(?P<question_id>[0-9]+)/vote/$', views.vote, name='vote'),
    ]

Now change your ``polls/index.html`` template from:

.. snippet:: html+django
    :filename: polls/templates/polls/index.html

    <li><a href="{% url 'detail' question.id %}">{{ question.question_text }}</a></li>

to point at the namespaced detail view:

.. snippet:: html+django
    :filename: polls/templates/polls/index.html

    <li><a href="{% url 'polls:detail' question.id %}">{{ question.question_text }}</a></li>

When you're comfortable with writing views, read :doc:`part 4 of this tutorial
</intro/tutorial04>` to learn about simple form processing and generic views.