Adding to the Context

Part of the Class-Based Views section of Coddy's Django journey. Lesson 3 of 18.

The home page could be a TemplateView too, except that its template needs data. The variables a template receives are its context, and a generic view builds them in a method, get_context_data(). Override it to add your own. A recipe site counts its quick recipes:

class RecipeHomeView(TemplateView):
    template_name = "recipes/home.html"

    def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
        context = super().get_context_data(**kwargs)
        context["quick"] = Recipe.objects.filter(minutes__lte=30).count()
        return context

Three steps, always the same: super().get_context_data(**kwargs) gets the dictionary Django built, you add your keys, and you return the dictionary. The template gets whatever this method returns.

The query sits inside the method, so it runs on every request. As a class attribute it would run once, when the server starts, and the number would never change.

Challenge

Easy

The home template now also shows the newest job. Rewrite HomeView:

A TemplateView for jobs/home.html, with no get().
It adds count, the number of jobs, and latest, the job with the newest posted date, to the context.

Press Run: the home page says 12 jobs open and Newest: Python Developer at Brightline.

Try it yourself

from django.shortcuts import render
from django.views import View
from django.views.generic import TemplateView

from .models import Job


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


class AboutView(TemplateView):
    template_name = "jobs/about.html"