Question

I’m trying to redirect the browser back to the site root and also pass a variable in order to trigger a JS notification function… This is all with Django.

What I have now is this:

urls.py:

url(r'^accounts/password/reset/complete/$', views.passwordResetComplete,
    name='password_reset_complete'),

views.py:

def passwordResetComplete(theRequest):
return redirect(home(theRequest, 'Password reset successful'))

def home(theRequest, myMessage=None):
.........
    return render_to_response('new/index.html',
                              {
                             "myTopbar": myTopbar,
                             "isLoggedIn": isLoggedIn,
                             "myMessage": myMessage
                            },
                            context_instance=RequestContext(theRequest)
                         )

I get this error:

NoReverseMatch: Error importing 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8.......(gives full HTML of page)

I’ve been working around a few different solutions and nothing seems to work in the way that I need. The closest I’ve got is to redirect to ‘/?query-string’ with a JS function in root to check for that query-string and run the function if it’s present. However, that leaves the query-string in the URL for the duration of the user’s navigation of the site (which is 100% AJAX). I want to avoid having any strings/long hrefs in the URL.

Would be really grateful if anyone can tell me how to solve this problem.

Answer 1

HTTP is a stateless protocol, which means that each and every request is entirely unique and separated from anything and everything that has ever been done before. Put more simply, the only way (in HTTP) to “pass a variable” with a URL is to add it to the URL itself (/someobject/1/, for example, where 1 is an object id) or in the querystring (?someobject=1). Either way, the information is embedded in the URL and it’s up to your application to decipher that information out of the URL and do something with it.

The concept of a “session” was introduced as a way to provide state to the stateless protocol that is HTTP. The way it works is that the server sends the client a cookie containing some identifiable information (usually, just a session id). Then, the client sends the cookie back to the server in the request headers with every request. The server sees the cookie, looks up the session and continues on seamlessly with whatever is in progress. This is not true state, but it does provide the ability to essentially mimic state, and it’s the only way to pass data between requests without actually embedding the data in the URL.

If all you need to return back is a message to the user such as “Password reset successful”, you can and should simply use Django’s messages framework, which itself uses the session pass the message. It sets a cookie for the client, so that you can redirect to any URL. The cookie will be passed back with the request for that new URL, and Django will add the message from the session into the appropriate place in your template for that URL.

If you need to actually invoke a bit of JavaScript, then you should make the request via AJAX. In the response, you can return any data you want in via JSON (and act on that data however you like) or even return Javascript to be run.