Using URL Parameters in Views
A base view normally looks like:
class PostPage(View):
def get(self, request):
return render(request, 'post.html')
And so we'd update the urls.py to have:
from instaclone.views import HomePage, PostPage
urlpatterns = [
url(r'^admin/', admin.site.urls),
url(r'^$', HomePage.as_view()),
url(r'^post/(?P<postID>[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+)', PostPage.as_view())
]
But we need to get postID somehow. We get it as an argument into the get method, has to have the same variable name:
class PostPage(View):
def get(self, request, postID):
print(postID)
return render(request, 'post.html')
Let's see if this works by going to the URL and seeing what gets printed out. Go to:
http://127.0.0.1:8000/post/thisworkedwoohooo
We expect postID = "thisworkedwoohooo"
You may have noticed that it crashed after because template not found. This makes sense because we havent made a post.html yet. Let's do that now. Make post.html in your templates folder. I have initialized it with the following repeat code from the index.html:
{% load staticfiles %}
<html>
<head>
<title>instaclone</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.7/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-BVYiiSIFeK1dGmJRAkycuHAHRg32OmUcww7on3RYdg4Va+PmSTsz/K68vbdEjh4u" crossorigin="anonymous">
</head>
<body>
<nav class="navbar navbar-default">
<div class="container-fluid">
<!-- Brand and toggle get grouped for better mobile display -->
<div class="navbar-header">
<button type="button" class="navbar-toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#bs-example-navbar-collapse-1" aria-expanded="false">
<span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
</button>
<a class="navbar-brand" href="#">Brand</a>
</div>
<!-- Collect the nav links, forms, and other content for toggling -->
<div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="bs-example-navbar-collapse-1">
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
<li class="active"><a href="#">Link <span class="sr-only">(current)</span></a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
<li class="dropdown">
<a href="#" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" role="button" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">Dropdown <span class="caret"></span></a>
<ul class="dropdown-menu">
<li><a href="#">Action</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Another action</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Something else here</a></li>
<li role="separator" class="divider"></li>
<li><a href="#">Separated link</a></li>
<li role="separator" class="divider"></li>
<li><a href="#">One more separated link</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<form class="navbar-form navbar-left">
<div class="form-group">
<input type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Search">
</div>
<button type="submit" class="btn btn-default">Submit</button>
</form>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
<li><a href="#">Link</a></li>
<li class="dropdown">
<a href="#" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" role="button" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">Dropdown <span class="caret"></span></a>
<ul class="dropdown-menu">
<li><a href="#">Action</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Another action</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Something else here</a></li>
<li role="separator" class="divider"></li>
<li><a href="#">Separated link</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div><!-- /.navbar-collapse -->
</div><!-- /.container-fluid -->
</nav>
This is a post page!
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.2.1.min.js" integrity="sha256-hwg4gsxgFZhOsEEamdOYGBf13FyQuiTwlAQgxVSNgt4=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.7/js/bootstrap.min.js" integrity="sha384-Tc5IQib027qvyjSMfHjOMaLkfuWVxZxUPnCJA7l2mCWNIpG9mGCD8wGNIcPD7Txa" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
</body>
</html>
All that is here is the Bootstrap + jQuery imports and our navbar. You might be wondering if there is a way to not have to copy the repeat html each time. The answer is yet and we will cover that later in the book :) Let's see what the page looks like:
Now let's get the specific post by the id that is passed in (for instance 1 or 2) and load the page's context with the neccesary info. Query for the post by id:
post = Post.objects.get(id=postID)
Passed the data into the front end:
class PostPage(View):
def get(self, request, postID):
context = {}
post = Post.objects.get(id=postID)
context["post"] = post
return render(request, 'post.html', context)
Now let's make the post page HTML item:
<div class="container">
<div class="row post-area">
<div class="col-md-4">
<div class="image-area">
<img class="image" src="{{ post.imgURL }}">
</div>
</div>
<div class="col-md-8">
<div class="image-info">
<div class="caption-text">
{{ post.caption }}
</div>
<div class="postedby-text">
Posted by {{ post.postedBy }}
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Let's go to the post with an ID of 1 to see what this looks like:
It looks pretty bad so let's add some style. Recall that first we have to make a new css file for this page and then we have to link it. Let's make a post.css file and link it to our post.html by putting the following in the head:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{% static 'css/post.css' %}">
and add the following styles:
.post-area {
height: 400px;
}
.image {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}
.image-info {
background-color: #d3d3d3;
height: 100%;
padding: 30px;
}
.caption-text {
font-size: 200%;
}
.postedby-text {
font-size: 150%;
margin-top: 30px;
font-weight: 100;
}
I also updated the header navbar to be much simpler and just this:
<nav class="navbar navbar-default">
<div class="container-fluid">
<a class="navbar-brand" href="/">Instaclone</a>
</div>
</div><!-- /.container-fluid -->
</nav>
Note that I set the href of the Instaclone link to be "/" which is our home page. Be sure to update the navbar in the index.html as well. It Looks like:
Now that we have a specific URL page, we have to link to this page from the posts on the home page! We'll do that next :)