Question

Here is my scenario: I have multiple select boxes on a page, where a user selects choices from a ModelChoiceField and is re-directed to a view with the selected option(s) passed as a parameter. Something like:

class BrowseForm(forms.Form):
    thing = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=Thing.objects.all(), empty_label=None, widget=forms.Select(attrs={'onchange': 'this.form.submit();'}))
    stuff = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=Stuff.objects.all(), empty_label=None, widget=forms.Select(attrs={'onchange': 'this.form.submit();'}))

view:

def browse(request):
    thing_list = Thing.objects.all()
    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = BrowseForm(request.POST)
        if form.is_valid():
            thing = form.cleaned_data['thing']
            stuff = form.cleaned_data['stuff']
            return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('browse_thing', kwargs={'thing':thing, 'stuff':stuff}))
    else:
        form = BrowseForm()
    return render(request, 'browse.html', {'form':form, 'thing_list':thing_list})

This requires that I submit both fields of BrowseForm, but I want so that there are two different urls for thing and stuff, where either thing or stuff is passed as the parameter, not both. Something like:

url(r'^browse/things/(?P<thing>[\w-]+)/$', 'views.browse', name='browse_thing'),
url(r'^browse/stuff/(?P<stuff>[\w-]+)/$', 'views.browse', name='browse_stuff'),

Is there a way to do this with one form and one view? Or do I need to write a different form for thing and stuff, then check to see which one is passed in my view and re-direct to the appropriate url accordingly? How would you do this? Thanks for your ideas!

Answer 1

Although it doesn’t seem very DRY, this is how I solved the problem:

forms.py:

class StuffBrowseForm(forms.Form):
    stuff = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=Stuff.objects.all(), widget=forms.Select(attrs={'onchange': 'this.form.submit();'}))

class ThingBrowseForm(forms.Form):
    thing = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=Thing.objects.all(), widget=forms.Select(attrs={'onchange': 'this.form.submit();'}))

view:

def browse(request):
    thing_list = Thing.objects.all()
    if request.method == 'POST':
        form1 = StuffBrowseForm(request.POST)
        form2 = ThingBrowseForm(request.POST)
        if form1.is_valid():
            stuff = form1.cleaned_data['stuff']
            return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('browse_stuffs', kwargs={'stuff':stuff}))
        elif form2.is_valid():
            thing = form2.cleaned_data['thing']
            return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('browse_things', kwargs={'thing':thing}))
    else:
        form1 = StuffBrowseForm()
        form2 = ThingBrowseForm()
    return render(request, 'browse.html', {'form1':form1, 'form2':form2, 'thing_list':thing_list})

urls:

url(r'^browse/$', 'views.browse', name='browse'),
url(r'^browse/stuff/(?P<stuff>[\w-]+)/$', 'views.browse_stuffs', name='browse_stuffs'),
url(r'^browse/things/(?P<thing>[\w-]+)/$', 'views.browse_things', name='browse_things'),