Question

I have a page that can be viewed by list or grid view through jQuery, but I want the URL to display what view it is — especially when user paginate so that they don’t have to reclick what they want to view — so something like this: /test/?grid_view or /test/?list_view.

I’ve been trying to use request.GET.get, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Here is what I have so far:

def test (request):
    grid_view = request.GET.get('grid_view')
    list_view = request.GET.get('list_view')
    if grid_view:
        return render_to_response('grid_view.html', {}, context_instance=RequestContext(request))
    elif list_view:
        return render_to_response('list_view.html', {}, context_instance=RequestContext(request))
    else:
        return render_to_response('default_view.html', {}, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Then in my main template I’d point the different views to <a href="/?list_view/">list view</a>, etc. There is probably a better way to do it so any suggestions are appreciated too.

Answer 1

An empty string is evaluated to False and, that is what your GET request Query String parameters will contain.

You could modify your code to:

if 'grid_view' in request.GET or 'grid_view/' in request.GET:
    pass
elif 'list_view' in request.GET or 'list_view/' in request.GET:
    pass

Or:

if request.GET.has_key('grid_view') or request.GET.has_key('grid_view/'):
# ...