Question

I’m building a web application (in Django) that will accept a search criteria and display a report – once the user is satisfied with the results, save both the criteria and a reference to these objects back to the database.

The problem I’m having is finding an elegant solution for having 2 forms:

1. Display (GET) the results of their criteria.
2. Enter in some descriptions, and save (POST) everything back to the database.

I’m leaning towards AJAX for the GET stuff and a POST for the save, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a more elegant solution first.

Answer 1

Before implementing ajax, i’ll try to make the forms work with javascript disabled. The 2 forms can point to the same view.
For routing the action, You can use <button type="submit">tags with name value attributes filled, instead of <input type="submit">.

The 2 forms template

<form action="{% url your-url %}" method="get">
  <input type="text" name="q" value="{{ q }}">
  <button type="submit" name="action" value="search">Search</button>
</form>

{% if entries %}
  ...
  <form action="{% url your-url %}" method="post">
    <input type="hidden" name="q" value="{{ q }}">
    <button type="submit" name="action" value="save">Save entries</button>
  </form>
{% endif %}

The not so ugly one form template

<form action="{% url your-url %}" method="post">
  <input type="text" name="q" value="{{ q }}">

  <button type="submit" name="action" value="search">Search</button>

  {% if entries %}
    ...
    <button type="submit" name="action" value="save">Save entries</button>
  {% endif %}
</form>

Then, catch the “action” into your view, like this code (not tested)

def your_view(request, *args, **kwargs):
    action = request.REQUEST.get('action', None)
    if request.method == 'POST' and action == 'save':
        # do the save stuff
    elif action == 'search':
        # no need to check if it's a GET
        if request.REQUEST.get('q', None):
            # do the display stuff
        else:
            # q required, maybe push a warning message here
    else:
        # default stuff

    return # the response ...

Then you can some ajax