Question

When I list points I want to add up all the points for a user. In my template I’ll like to just call something like ‘points.total_points’. Below is what I have so far, I would like to keep this all in my model if possible. Could someone help explain how to acheive this?

Thanks

model.py

class PointsManager(models.Manager):

    def points_list(self,thisUser):
        list = Points.objects.filter(user=thisUser)
        return list


class Points (models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    points = models.IntegerField(verbose_name=("Points"), default=0)
    created = models.DateTimeField(("Created at"), auto_now_add=True)
    updated = models.DateTimeField(verbose_name=("Updated at"), auto_now=True)

    objects = PointsManager()



    class Meta:
      verbose_name = ('Point')
      verbose_name_plural = ('Points')

view.py

@login_required
def history(request):

    thisPoints = Points.objects.points_list(request.user)
    context = {'points':thisPoints}
    return render_to_response('points/history.html', context, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Answer 1

There’re a couple of things that could be done:

1) make request available in templates:

add common.core.middleware.RequestMiddleware to MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES

so that you could just write request.user to access User model

2) add total_points method to User model (it can be done in various ways, contribute_to_class or UserProfile to name two of them)

so that you could write request.user.total_points in a template

3) cache total_points to avoid a database hit every time the page is viewed:

    3a) either use standard django caching framework,

or if you want the displayed value to change immediately after it has been changed in the database,

    3b) update the value manually when a new Point instance is created/modified/deleted via django signals