Question

I’m constructing some Django filter queries dynamically, using this example:

kwargs = { 'deleted_datetime__isnull': True }
args = ( Q( title__icontains = 'Foo' ) | Q( title__icontains = 'Bar' ) )
entries = Entry.objects.filter( *args, **kwargs )

I’m just not sure how to construct the entry for args. Say I have this array:

strings = ['Foo', 'Bar']

How do I get from there to:

args = ( Q( title__icontains = 'Foo' ) | Q( title__icontains = 'Bar' ) 

The closest I can get is:

for s in strings:
    q_construct = Q( title__icontains = %s) % s
    args.append(s)

But I don’t know how to set up the | condition.

Answer 1

You can iterate it directly using a kwarg format (I don’t know the proper term)

argument_list = [] #keep this blank, just decalring it for later
fields = ('title') #any fields in your model you'd like to search against
query_string = 'Foo Bar' #search terms, you'll probably populate this from some source

for query in query_string.split(' '):  #breaks query_string into 'Foo' and 'Bar'
    for field in fields:
        argument_list.append( Q(**{field+'__icontains':query_object} ) ) 

query = Entry.objects.filter( reduce(operator.or_, argument_list) )

# --UPDATE-- here's an args example for completeness

order = ['publish_date','title'] #create a list, possibly from GET or POST data
ordered_query = query.order_by(*orders()) # Yay, you're ordered now!

This will look for each string in your query_string in each field in fields and OR the result

I wish I still had my original source for this, but this is adapted from code I use.