Reload template after AJAX POST request in Django

Question

I'm using HTML5 geolocation to get a user's location, then sending the lat/long to my django app to find the three nearest schools. I'm able to post the lat/long, run it through a function to get the closest schools, and print out the dict object in terminal, but the template never reloads with the new context_dict data.

HTML

{% csrf_token %}
<input id = 'button' type="submit" value="Use current location" onclick = 'find_school()' class="btn btn-default">

JS

function find_school(){

function send_off(lat, long){
    var locale = [lat, long];
    console.log(lat, long);
    return locale
}

navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position) {
    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: "/schools/search/",
        data: {
            csrfmiddlewaretoken: document.getElementsByName('csrfmiddlewaretoken')[0].value,
            lat_pos: position.coords.latitude,
            long_pos: position.coords.longitude
        },
        success: function(data){
            console.log(data);
        }
    })
});

}

views.py

def find_school(request):
    context = RequestContext(request)
    search_school_list = search_school_bar()
    if request.GET:
        address = request.GET['q_word']
        close_schools = geolocate(address)
        context_dict = {'close_schools': close_schools, 'search_schools':json.dumps(search_school_list)}
    elif request.method == 'POST' and request.is_ajax():
        position = request.POST

        #the geo_search view takes the lat and long
        return geo_search(request, position['lat_pos'],position['long_pos'] )
    else:
        context_dict = {'search_schools':json.dumps(search_school_list)}

    return render_to_response('school_data/search.html', context_dict, context)

def geo_search(request, lat, long):
    context = RequestContext(request)
    search_school_list = search_school_bar()

    close_schools = geolocate_gps(lat, long)

    context_dict = {'close_schools': close_schools, 'search_schools':json.dumps(search_school_list)}
    #This print statement returns in my terminal the results, and they are correct. I just need to reload the template to display the results.
    print context_dict
    #This isn't re-rendering the page with the correct context_dict. It is doing nothing.
    return render_to_response('school_data/search.html', context_dict, context)

Answer 1

If you return the output of render_to_response to an ajax call, you are returning the HTML as the "data" element in "success:function(data)" in your javascript call. I don't think you want to be using AJAX if your goal is to reload the page.

You should have something like:

navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position) {
 var form = $('<form action="/geosearch/" method="POST"></form>');
 var long =$('<input name = "long" type="hidden"></input>');
 var lat =$('<input name = "lat" type="hidden"></input>');
 lat.val(position.coords.latitude);
 long.val(position.coords.latitude);
 form.append(lat, long);
 $('body').append(form);
 form.submit();
}

And your view at /geosearch/ should take the post variables, do whatever you want, and then render_to_response.