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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T06:39:50+00:00

I’m trying to create a comments section for a web page. However, the function

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I’m trying to create a comments section for a web page. However, the function I used in my views.py file returns an error: “Local variable referenced before assignment.” Here is the code:

from django.http import HttpResponse, HttpResponseRedirect
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django import forms
from django.db import models
from django.template import RequestContext




class CommentForm(forms.Form):

    name = forms.CharField(max_length=100)

    email = forms.EmailField(required=False)

    comment = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)



    def clean_message(self):

        message = self.cleaned_data['message']

        num_words = len(message.split())

        return message



def comment(request):
    commentlist = []

    errors = []

    if request.method == "POST":
        form = CommentForm(request.POST)

        if form.is_valid():
            comment = form.cleaned_data
            commentlist.append(comment)

            return HttpResponseRedirect('')
    else:
        form = CommentForm()    
    initialData = ({'form': form, 'commentlist': commentlist, 'comment': comment})

    csrfContext = RequestContext(request, initialData)

    return render_to_response('hello_world.htm', csrfContext)

Here is my template, called “hello_world.htm”:

<html>
<head>
<style>
ul.errorlist{

margin: 0;

padding: 0;

}



.errorlist li{

background-color: red;

color: white;

display: block;

font-size: 10px;

margin: 0 0 3px;

padding: 4px 5px;

}



.field

{

background-color:#E2F2F2;

border: white 1px solid;

padding: 5px;

width: 80%;

font-family: Arial;

}


.field2

{

background-color:#E2F2E2;

border: white 1px solid;

padding: 5px;

width: 80%;

font-family: Arial;

}


.header

{

background-color:#E2E2F2;

border: white 1px solid;

padding: 5px;

width: 80%;

font-family: Arial;

}

</style>
</head>
<body>
Hello world
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<div class="field2">
Comments:
</div>
{% for comment in commentlist %}
<div class="field2">
{{ comment }}
</div>
{% endfor %}
{% if form.errors %}

<p style="color: red;"><b>Please correct the error{{ form.errors|pluralize }} below.  </b></p>

{% endif %}
<div class="field"><b>Want to comment?</b></div>

<form action="" method="post">

{% csrf_token %}

<div class="field">

{{ form.name.errors }}

<label for="id_subject">Name:</label>

{{ form.name }}

</div>

<div class="field">

{{ form.email.errors }}

<label for="id_email">Your e-mail address</label>

{{ form.email }}

</div>

<div class="field">

{{ form.comment.errors }}

<p>Comment:</p>

{{ form.comment }}

<br/>

<input type="submit" value="Submit">

</div>

How can I rewrite my views.py (particularly the “comments” function) so that this error will not come up? Sorry if there are many errors in my code, I have only been working with Django for a few days. Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I see one variable that might not be assigned, depending on how the if statements fire: comment. Set it to null or something to start:

    def comment(request):
    commentlist = []
    comment = ''

    And rename the function to something else, maybe get_comment() – it’s a bad idea to have variables the same name as functions.

    Also, for debugging the commentlist variable – try setting it in the else statement, just to see if you’re handling the GET correctly:

        else: #form invalid
        commentlist = ['bad form']
else:
    form = CommentForm()
    commentlist = ['testing']

    Update – wups, I just noticed you had both comment and commentlist in the template dictionary. Take out comment:

    initialData = ({'form': form, 'commentlist': commentlist}

    Otherwise I suspect that it’s interfering with the comment variable in the template.

    Update 2 – sigh. I didn’t read the code closely enough – you have an HttpResponseRedirect right after assigning commentlist – so the list is never set and passed to render_to_response. If you’re thinking that commentlist will be built up over several calls – it won’t, because you’re setting it to an empty list at the start of the function. Basically, you need to re-write all of the logic. 🙂

    Or you could try commenting out the HttpResponseRedirect, and let it fall through to the render_to_response line.

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