Creating a web query form

Question

I have two models: Director, and Film.

I want to create a web query form so that a user can search something like "All films from director 'Steven Spielberg' between 1990 and 1998".

Just curious what the best and simplest way to do this would be?

Thanks,

I am not sure what you are asking. Processing a GET request with parameters? Making queries on the database? Both? Something else? — rantanplan, Apr 30 '12 at 20:01
making queries to a database, i guess they can be the same thing? — thedeepfield, Apr 30 '12 at 20:04

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

OK the simplest solution is something like that.

I make some assumptions about the structure of your models, so adjust accordingly.

Let's say this is our models.py

from django.db import models

class Director(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=128)
    # maybe some other fields...

class Film(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=128)
    director = models.ForeignKey(Director)
    created_at = models.DateField()

Our naive views.py Please keep in mind that I deliberately omit many sanity checks.

import datetime
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from myapp.models import Film

def search(request):
    # Suppose we support these params -> ('director', 'fromdate', 'todate')
    request_params = request.GET.copy()
    fromdate = datetime.datetime.strptime(request_params['fromdate'], 'some-string-format')
    todate = datetime.datetime.strptime(request_params['todate'], 'some-string-format')
    # Our query is ready to take off.
    film_results = Film.objects.filter(
        director__name=request_params['director'],
        created_at__range=(fromdate, todate)
    )
    return render_to_response('search_results.html', {'results':film_results})

Our search_results.html template

{% extends some_base.html %}
{% if results }
  {% for film in results %}
    <h3>{{ film.title }}</h3>
    <p>Director: {{ film.director.name }}</p>
    <p>When: {{ film.created_at }}</p>
  {% endfor %}
{% else %}
  <p>Sorry no results for your query</p>
{% endif %}

Also read this on creating datetime objects from string

Edit: Oh I forgot about the urls.py and the actual form :)

in your url.py add something like this inside the urlpatterns.

url(r'^search/$', 'myapp.views.search'),

Now the actual search form must be something like this:

<form method='GET', action='/search/'>
... your fields
</form>

You can generate it through a django form if you wish. Anyway this is not going to get you far I guess. If you are doing anything serious you might take a look into haystack

Hmm, I was hoping I wouldn't have to do all this... what happens if the End-User only selects dates, and no author? will the query just pull all books from like 1990 to 1998? — thedeepfield, Apr 30 '12 at 21:20
Well the things you mention are the sanity checks that I deliberately ommited :) But how could you automate this? The logic you described can't be inferred without inflexible assumptions. The only thing that needs discussing/thinking is where to put that logic. Inside the view or maybe your search form? You decide. — rantanplan, Apr 30 '12 at 21:28

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 30 '12 at 19:47

Hm. I don't believe any utilty like this exists. It would be nice if there were a reverse ModelForm. It would look at field type and get the data ranges for each field for a search form.

I think right now you are stuck with creating a text box and a datepicker range. And processing that data in a view.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 30 '12 at 21:48

0

Sounds like you want to let your users perform "faceted" searches. Django Haystack will let you do that. Their documentation contains information about faceting.

answered Apr 30 '12 at 21:48

Sam Starling

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Creating a web query form

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