Question

Hi I have an application which checks and counts searched terms by updating a counter if the query has already been searched and inserts a field with counter=1 if the query is new.

The search counter model:

class Search(models.Model):
    term = models.CharField(unique=True, max_length=255)
    counter = models.IntegerField()
    last_search = models.DateTimeField()

and a view containing this:

# update search counter with term
    try:        
        term = Search.objects.get(term=query)
    except Search.DoesNotExist:
        term = None
    if term:
        term.counter = F('counter') + 1
        term.last_search = datetime.now()
    else:
        term = Search(
                term=query,
                counter=1,
                last_search = datetime.now()
        )               
    term.save()

My question is really – is this a good way to do this and is there a more concise way to put it? It seems overly ugly to me, and being a Django novice I would like to see a ‘best practice’ implementation of the same. Any answers appreciated.

Answer 1

Here’s a more concise version (you might need to set “default=0” on the counter field):

try:
    term = Search.objects.get(term=query)
except Search.DoesNotExist:
    term = Search(term=query)

term.counter += 1
term.last_search = datetime.now()
term.save()

You don’t need to set all the values in the constructor – as long as they’re all there by the time you save or validate.