A View Class

Part of the Class-Based Views section of Coddy's Django journey. Lesson 1 of 18.

This section builds a job board, and its home page is a function view like every view so far. Django also lets you write a view as a class: you subclass View and add one method per HTTP method. A GET request calls get(), a POST calls post().

from django.views import View


class RecipeCountView(View):
    def get(self, request):
        total = Recipe.objects.count()
        return HttpResponse(f"{total} recipes")

The method takes self, then request, and returns a response, as a function view does. A route needs a function, and .as_view() makes one from the class: path("count/", views.RecipeCountView.as_view()). On every request that function makes a new object of the class and calls the method that matches.

A method the class does not define, like POST here, gets 405 Method Not Allowed. The payoff comes next: Django ships classes that already do the common jobs.

Challenge

Easy

Turn the home page into a class:

In jobs/views.py, replace the function home with HomeView, a View whose get() does what home did.
In jobs/urls.py, point the route "" at the class. Keep name="home".

Press Run: the home page still says 12 jobs open.

Try it yourself

from django.shortcuts import render

from .models import Job


def home(request):
    count = Job.objects.count()
    return render(request, "jobs/home.html", {"count": count})