How to prevent a url from changing when loading the same template with different data in Django

Question

I got a simple def with something like this

def policies_index(request):
    """Resource listing"""
    policies = Policy.objects.all()
    context = {
        'policies' : policies
    }
    return render(request, "policies/index.html", context)

now I want to add a way to filter that info using month and year so I made a function like this

def policies_date_filter(request):
    """List the resources based on a month year filter"""
    today = datetime.date.today()
    year = request.POST['year']
    month = request.POST['month']
    policies = Policy.objects.filter(end_date__year=year).filter(end_date__month=month)
    status = settings.POLICY_STATUS_SELECT
    for policy in policies:
        for status_name in status:
            if status_name['value'] == policy.status:
                policy.status_name = status_name['name']
    request.policies = policies

    return policies_index(request)

that way I can reuse the function index to avoid writing the code to print the view again and works perfect, but in the url instead of something like "/policies" I got something like "/policies/date-filter"

Which makes sense since Im calling another function Is there a way to prevent the url from changing?

Answer 1

lol, writing this question I just figured it out I could call the same function in the view but with a POST method instead of a GET so they will keep the same url, so I ended up with something like this

 def policies_index(request):
    """Resource listing"""

    #If method == POST it means is the filter function so I change the policies queryset
    if request.method == "POST":
        year = request.POST['year']
        month = request.POST['month']
        policies = Policy.objects.filter(end_date__year=year).filter(end_date__month=month)
    else:
        policies = Policy.objects.all()

    context = {
        'policies' : policies,
    }
    return render(request, "policies/index.html", context)

and now works like a charm, what do you guys think? is there a better way to do it? Im kinda new with Django