views.py

Base Views

The base views provide a simple set of generic views for working with Django querysets and model instances.

They replicate the functionality of Django's existing TemplateView and FormView but present a simpler API and implementation. Django's standard RedirectView is also included for completeness.

View --+-------------------- RedirectView
       |
       +-- GenericView --+-- TemplateView
                         |
                         +-- FormView

GenericView

The GenericView class is used as the base class for both TemplateView and FormView, and provides methods allowing for a default set of simple template and form actions.

Attributes

form_class

The form class that should be used for edit views. If you are using FormView, or your own custom view that calls get_form(), then you should either set this attribute, or override one of the form generation methods. Defaults to None.

template_name

A string representing the template name that should be used when rendering the response content. You should either set this attribute or override one of the methods controlling how responses are rendered. Defaults to None.

Methods

get_form_class(self)

This method returns the class that should be used for generating forms.

The default behavior for this method is:

• If form_class is specified on the view then use that.
• Otherwise raise a configuration error.

You can customize how the form class for the view is determined by overriding this method. For example:

def get_form_class(self):
    is self.request.user.is_staff():
        return AccountForm
    return BasicAccountForm

get_form(self, data=None, files=None, **kwargs)

The method instantiates and returns the form instance that should be used for the view.

By default this method simply calls get_form_class(), and then instantiates the class with the parameters that have been passed to it.

You can customize this method in order to supply additional arguments to the form class, add initial data, or other customizations. For example:

def get_form(self, data=None, files=None, **kwargs):
    kwargs['user'] = self.request.user
    return AccountForm(data, files, **kwargs)

get_context_data(self, **kwargs)

This method takes a set of keyword arguments supplied by the view and returns a dictionary to use as context when rendering the response template.

The default behavior of this method is to return a dictionary populated with the following keys:

• view - A reference to the view instance.
• Any additional keyword arguments supplied to the method. In particular, FormView includes the form context key.

You can override the method either to add additional context data:

def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
    context = super(MyView, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)
    context['is_admin'] = self.request.user.is_admin
    return context

Or to specify the complete set of context data explicitly:

def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
    kwargs['view'] = self
    kwargs['is_admin'] = self.request.user.is_admin
    kwargs['account'] = self.object
    return kwargs

get_template_names(self)

Returns a list of strings that should be used for determining the template name when rendering the response.

The default behavior for this method is:

• If template_name is specified on the view then use that.
• Otherwise raise a configuration error.

render_to_response(self, context)

Generates the response that should be returned by the view. Takes a single argument which should be a dictionary of context data to use when rendering the response template.

The default behaviour of this method is to return an instance of Django's standard TemplateResponse.

You can override this method if you need to customize how the response is generated. For example, to return a response with the text/plain content type instead of the standard text/html, you could write something like this:

def render_to_response(self, context):
    template = self.get_template_names()
    return TemplateResponse(self.request, template, context, content_type='text/plain')

You can also override this class in order to use a subclass of Django's standard HttpResponse or TemplateResponse. For example, if you had a written a custom JSONResponse class, you might override the method like this:

def render_to_response(self, context):
    return JSONResponse(self.request, context)

RedirectView

For completeness, Django's standard RedirectView is included in the django-vanilla-views package. The class does not have any implementation or API differences from Django's implementation.

You should refer to the Django documentation for further information.

TemplateView

A page which simply returns a template response.

The context passed to the response template will be:

• view - The view instance.

FormView

A page which allows the user to preview and submit a form.

The context passed to the response template will be:

• view - The view instance.
• form - The form instance.

success_url

The URL that should be used when redirecting after a successful form submission.

form_valid(self, form)

This method will be run when a valid form submission occurs, and should return a response object. The default behavior is to return a redirect response as determined by calling get_success_url().

form_invalid(self, form)

This method will be run when a valid form submission occurs, and should return a response object. The default behavior is to return a TemplateResponse which renders the form errors.

get_success_url()

Returns the URL that should be used when redirecting after a successful form submission. Defaults to returning the value of the success_url attribute.

Note: If you are customizing the view behavior, we'd typically recommend overriding the form_valid() method directly rather than overriding get_success_url(), as it will result in simpler, more obvious flow control.