Python/Django handling HTTP requests in the right way

Question

Few days ago I have decided to learn Python / Django and practice using it on one of my private projects. I have done the djangoproject tutorial 1-6 in builidng 'polls' app and now moved on into doing sth on my own.

Simple problem - I want an endpoint for viewing, creating, editing and deleting 'deals'.

So far I have the following in views.py

from django.views import generic
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect
from django.views.generic.edit import CreateView
from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse

from .models import Deal

class IndexView(generic.ListView):
    context_object_name = 'latest_deals_list'

    def get_queryset(self):
        return Deal.objects.order_by('-created_date')[:10]

class DetailView(generic.DetailView):
    model = Deal

class DealCreate(CreateView):
    model = Deal
    fields = ['title', 'url']

    def post(self, *args, **kwargs):
        title = self.request.POST["title"]
        url = self.request.POST["url"]

        try:
            deal = Deal(tite=title, url = url)
            deal.save()
        except Exception as e:
            print e

        return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('deals:detail', args=(deal.id,)));

and my urls.py lokks like that:

from django.conf.urls import url

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^$', views.IndexView.as_view(), name='index'),
    url(r'^(?P<pk>[0-9]+)/$', views.DetailView.as_view(), name='detail'),
    url(r'^create/$', views.DealCreate.as_view(), name='create')
]

It all works fine but I am struggling to understand how that could be organised into more concise API-like structure. Could I have only /deals in a route and then implement all methods separately GET / POST / PUT / DELETE using different templates? Would I do that within indexView and only have forms printed inside the other views? Just does not feel right for me to have POST method within /create or am I overthinking this.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I realised it is better to use function-based approach with ModelForm rather than GenericViews. My updated code with form validation working looks like that:

from django.views import generic
from django.shortcuts import render, get_object_or_404
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect
from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse

from .models import Deal
from .forms import DealForm

class IndexView(generic.ListView):
    context_object_name = 'latest_deals_list'

    def get_queryset(self):
        return Deal.objects.order_by('-created_date')[:10]

class DetailView(generic.DetailView):
    model = Deal

def add_model(request):

    form = DealForm(request.POST or None)
    if form.is_valid():
        deal = form.save()
        return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('deals:detail', args=(deal.id,)));

    return render(request, "deals/deal_form.html", {'form': form, 'title': 'Add New Deal'})

def update_model(request, pk):

    deal = get_object_or_404(Deal, pk=pk)

    form = DealForm(request.POST or None, instance=deal)
    if form.is_valid():
        deal = form.save()
        return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('deals:detail', args=(deal.id,)));

    return render(request, "deals/deal_form.html", {'form': form, 'title': 'Editing "' + deal.title + '"'})

def delete_model(request, pk):

    deal = get_object_or_404(Deal, pk=pk)

    if request.method == 'POST':
        deal.delete()
        return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('deals:index'));

    return render(request, "deals/deal_confirm_delete.html", {'object': deal, 'title': 'Confirm deleting "' + deal.title + '"'})

urls.py:

from django.conf.urls import url

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^$', views.IndexView.as_view(), name='index'),
    url(r'^(?P<pk>[0-9]+)/$', views.DetailView.as_view(), name='detail'),
    url(r'^create/$', views.add_model, name='create'),
    url(r'^(?P<pk>[0-9]+)/edit/$', views.update_model, name='update'),
    url(r'^(?P<pk>[0-9]+)/delete/$', views.delete_model, name='delete')
]

and forms.py:

from django.forms import ModelForm
from .models import Deal

class DealForm(ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Deal
        fields = ['title', 'url']