Question

I am building a website that shows a different background every time a user enters it. This background is then used across the website with the same user and session.

So basically, a user entres the homepage, gets a background and that image won’t change until the user closes the website or opens up a new page. I think you understand what I mean.

I know how to get a random record from the database using Django, but I’m not sure how to keep that record persistent across the website, because if I pull it on every view, I’ll get a different image on different pages.

So my “index” view could be calling

bgimage = BackgroundImage.objects.random()

But then I have a problem. How can I get this random record unchanged across all the other views. Is that possible? Should I be looking into sessions, cookies?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Context processor:

def bgimage(request):
    if 'bg_image' not in request.session:
        image = BackgroundImage.objects.random()
        request.session['bg_image'] = image.file
    return {'background_image' : request.session['image']}