Django: javascript needs to call a python script, what location do I put it in?

Question

I get really confused about django and file locations a lot, and I'm on django 1.10. But in my static/(django-proj-name)/js/ folder (just showing the way I have my main.js file and I need to call a python script, in conjunction with the jquery tokeninput plugin. Lets call the script keywords.py

This script is going to need to call all instances of a model, Keyword, so I need to be able to import from my models file.

Im' a bit inexperienced with django, but from reviewing some of the projects I've seen over the summer I was startinng to believe that including the line, from (django-proj-name).models import * was the main way to import from models. This at least works for all of the files that I have in my /management/commands/ folder.

But i tried putting keywords.py in my static folder just because I know at the very least I can use the {% static %} template tag to find the file in html. I ran the file without manage.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "../../management/commands/import_statements.py", line 5, in <module>
    from gtr_site.models import *
  ImportError: No module named gtr_site.models

Though I have the same importation line, again, in /management/commands/. And that doesn't cause any problems.

So I didn't put the file in the "correct" file location... I didn't put keywords.py in a place where

1. I know how to import from my models.py file from the keywords.py script's location

2. My javascript file can find it and run it without crashing. This script needs to be able to successfully import from models.

so where am I supposed to put this script, or how can I specify a location for it?

Answer 1

Let's say you have a js library that expects data in the following format:

 {"results": [
    {"name": "Foo", "number": 1}, 
    ..., 
    {"name": "Bar", "number": 999}
 ]}

You started an application called myapi:

  $ django manage.py startapp myapi

And suppose you have a Model like this at myapi/models.py:

 from django.db import models

 class Foo(models.Model):
     name = models.CharField(max_lenght=100),
     number = models.IntegerField()

In myapp/views.py define the following view:

from django.http import JsonResponse
from django.views import View
from .models import Foo

class FooList(View):
    def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        qs = list(Foo.objects.values('name', 'number').all())
        data = {"results": qs}
        return JsonResponse(data)

Then map this view to some url. For the sake of simplicity let's just add this to your main urls.py file:

url('api/v1/foo/$', FooList.as_view(), name='foo-list'),

Now you should be able to reach it from the browser. The example below uses jQuery:

$.getJSON('http://yourdomain.com/api/v1/foo/', 
    function(data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
        console.log(data);
    }
)

That is it. I did this from memory so you probably will find a few errors or missing imports - but this should put you on the right track.