mirskutils.views

Class-based views are an improved way of organizing view functions, including being able to inherit functionality from super-class (or mixins). As they are new as of django 1.4, not all packages have been convereted over to using them.

background

django url router calls dispatch method, which, by default, determines the kind of request and calls the appropriate method to handle the request:

• GET request -> def get(self, request, ...)
• POST request -> def post(self, request, ...)
• DELETE request -> def delete(self, request, ...)
• etc

if the class method associated with the request does not exist, an HttpMethodNotAllowed (405) is returned

the django.views.generic.View base-class has a static-method as_view() which provides an instance of the view class for the django router to reference / call:

url(r'^home/', Home.as_view(), name="home")

migration

the intention is to break get and post handlers into separate functions so that the originally recommended django GET/POST pattern:

def handle_information_form(request):
    form = InformationForm()

    if request.POST:
        form = InformationForm(request.POST)
        if form.is_valid():
            ...
            ...
            return render(request, 'template.html', {})
    return render(request, 'template.html', {'form':form})

becomes this:

from django.views.generic import View


class HandleInfo(View):
    def get(self, request):
        return render(request, 'template.html', {'form':InformationForm()})

    def post(self, request):
        form = InformationForm(request.POST)
        if form.is_valid():
            ...
            ...
            return render(request, 'template.html', {})
        return render(request, 'template.html', {'form':form})

migration-lite

migrations can be expensive, increase risk and break already working things. instead, the move towards class-based views can be done in a phased approach, by using the dispatch method as an equivalent to your original function. this is not best-practice:

class HandleInfo(View):

    def dispatch(self, request):

        form = InformationForm()

        if request.POST:
            form = InformationForm(request.POST)
            if form.is_valid():
                ...
                ...
                return render(request, 'template.html', {})
        return render(request, 'template.html', {'form':form})

authenticated views

class mirskutils.views.LoginRequiredView(**kwargs)

Subclass of django.views.generic.View which handles authentication replaces the use of @method_decorator in urls.py (for class-based views) or views.py (for function-based views)

Options:

• permissions : additional permissions to check
• redirect_401 : redirect location for non-authenticated user
• redirect_403 : redirect location for a forbidden operation
• check_active : include is_active in the check for authentication
• redirect_active : redirect location if a user is inactive (n/a when check_active = False)

dispatch(request, *args, **kwargs)

overrides the default display method in order to check authentication

class mirskutils.views.SessionHeartbeat(**kwargs)

Receives a periodic request to keep a users session active

For use with middleware.SessionTimeout() and {{ STATIC_URL }}js/heartbeat.js