How to call a “modal” from class within views.py in Django?

Question

I have a page with a form that is used to track entry/leave times. Currently, entries with errors (missing enter or exit) get flagged from views.py. I created a modal based on some templates I was given, but I have no idea how to call it from views.py.

Basically, after a submission gets flagged with an 'N', the modal would need to appear, asking the user to give a value. Right now the modal just says "Hi" because I'm trying to get it to appear first, before diving into the functionality of it.

Below is my views.py, with a comment of where the modal call would need to happen. I'm not sure how to render it within the logic in this part.

views.py

class EnterExitArea(CreateView):
    model = EmployeeWorkAreaLog
    template_name = "operations/enter_exit_area.html"
    form_class = WarehouseForm

    def form_valid(self, form):
        emp_num = form.cleaned_data['employee_number']
        area = form.cleaned_data['work_area']
        station = form.cleaned_data['station_number']

        if 'enter_area' in self.request.POST:
            form.save()
            EmployeeWorkAreaLog.objects.filter((Q(employee_number=emp_num) & Q(work_area=area) & Q(time_out__isnull=True) & Q(time_in__isnull=True)) & (Q(station_number=station) | Q(station_number__isnull=True))).update(time_in=datetime.now())

            # If employee has an entry without an exit and attempts to enter a new area, mark as an exception 'N'
            if EmployeeWorkAreaLog.objects.filter(Q(employee_number=emp_num) & Q(time_out__isnull=True) & Q(time_exceptions="")).count() > 1:
                first = EmployeeWorkAreaLog.objects.filter(employee_number=emp_num, time_out__isnull=True).order_by('-time_in').first()
                EmployeeWorkAreaLog.objects.filter((Q(employee_number=emp_num) & Q(time_out__isnull=True))).exclude(pk=first.pk).update(time_exceptions='N')

                # Here's where the modal would need to be called because the record was flagged

            return HttpResponseRedirect(self.request.path_info)


class UpdateTimestampModal(CreateUpdateModalView):
    """
    Modal to request estimated entry/exit time for manager approval
    """
    main_model = EmployeeWorkAreaLog
    model_name = "EmployeeWorkAreaLog"
    form_class = WarehouseForm
    template = 'operations/modals/update_timestamp_modal.html'
    modal_title = 'Update Timestamp'

urls.py

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'enter-exit-area/$', EnterExitArea.as_view(), name='enter_exit_area'),
    url(r'update-timestamp-modal/(?P<main_pk>\d+)/$', UpdateTimestampModal.as_view(), name='update_timestamp_modal'),
]

enter_exit_area.html

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% load core_tags %}

{% block main %}
    <form id="warehouseForm" action="" method="POST" novalidate >
        {% csrf_token %}

        <div>
            <div>
                {{ form.employee_number }}
            </div>

            <div>
                {{ form.work_area }}
            </div>
            <div>
                {{ form.station_number }}
            </div>
        </div>

        <div>
            <div>
                <button type="submit" name="enter_area" value="Enter">Enter Area</button>
                <button type="submit" name="leave_area" value="Leave">Leave Area</button>
            </div>
        </div>
    </form>

    {% modal id="create-update-modal" title="Update Timestamp" primary_btn="Submit" default_submit=True %}


{% endblock main %}

update_timestamp_modal.html

{% load core_tags %}

<form id="create-update-form" method="post" action="{% url "operations:update_timestamp_modal" main_object.id %}">
    {% csrf_token %}
    <label>UPDATE TIMESTAMP</label>
    <div class="row">
        <div class="form-group col-xs-6">
            <h1>Hi!!</h1>
        </div>
    </div>
</form>

I found this on some documentation about the modals that seemed relevant to calling it to open, adding just in case:

so the modal template tag will basically render an empty modal, and then when you call ajaxOpen you can then specify a URL that will render the dynamic HTML that will go into the empty modal. So in this case you'd probably want something like this in the call:

modals.ajaxOpen($('#create-update-modal'), undefined, $('#some-hidden-div').data('url'), function() {alert("it worked yay");});

Assuming that you put the url in a hidden div in the html somewhere since you wouldn't want to just hard-code it in the JS, but the url could also be returned from other ajax calls or whatever

Answer 1

Had to switch to function based views. In order to render modal, created a variable rendered in views.py that, if it exits, then it calls the modal from the main html.

return render(request, "operations/enter_exit_area.html", {
        'form': form,
        'enter_without_exit': enter_without_exit,
        'exit_without_enter': exit_without_enter,
    })

The enter_without_exit and exit_without_enter render two types of modals if they return anything other than None from views.py logic