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Introduction to class-based views

=================================

Class-based views provide an alternative way to implement views as Python

objects instead of functions. They do not replace function-based views, but

have certain differences and advantages when compared to function-based views:

* Organization of code related to specific HTTP methods (``GET``, ``POST``,

  etc.) can be addressed by separate methods instead of conditional branching.

* Object oriented techniques such as mixins (multiple inheritance) can be

  used to factor code into reusable components.

The relationship and history of generic views, class-based views, and class-based generic views

===============================================================================================

In the beginning there was only the view function contract, Django passed your

function an :class:`~django.http.HttpRequest` and expected back an

:class:`~django.http.HttpResponse`. This was the extent of what Django provided.

Early on it was recognized that there were common idioms and patterns found in

view development. Function-based generic views were introduced to abstract

these patterns and ease view development for the common cases.

The problem with function-based generic views is that while they covered the

simple cases well, there was no way to extend or customize them beyond some

configuration options, limiting their usefulness in many real-world

applications.

Class-based generic views were created with the same objective as

function-based generic views, to make view development easier. However, the way

the solution is implemented, through the use of mixins, provides a toolkit that

results in class-based generic views being more extensible and flexible than

their function-based counterparts.

If you have tried function based generic views in the past and found them

lacking, you should not think of class-based generic views as a class-based

equivalent, but rather as a fresh approach to solving the original problems

that generic views were meant to solve.

The toolkit of base classes and mixins that Django uses to build class-based

generic views are built for maximum flexibility, and as such have many hooks in

the form of default method implementations and attributes that you are unlikely

to be concerned with in the simplest use cases. For example, instead of

limiting you to a class-based attribute for ``form_class``, the implementation

uses a ``get_form`` method, which calls a ``get_form_class`` method, which in

its default implementation returns the ``form_class`` attribute of the class.

This gives you several options for specifying what form to use, from an

attribute, to a fully dynamic, callable hook. These options seem to add hollow

complexity for simple situations, but without them, more advanced designs would

be limited.

Using class-based views

=======================

At its core, a class-based view allows you to respond to different HTTP request

methods with different class instance methods, instead of with conditionally

branching code inside a single view function.

So where the code to handle HTTP ``GET`` in a view function would look

something like::

    from django.http import HttpResponse

    def my_view(request):

        if request.method == 'GET':

            # <view logic>

            return HttpResponse('result')

In a class-based view, this would become::

    from django.http import HttpResponse

    from django.views import View

    class MyView(View):

        def get(self, request):

            # <view logic>

            return HttpResponse('result')

Because Django's URL resolver expects to send the request and associated

arguments to a callable function, not a class, class-based views have an

:meth:`~django.views.generic.base.View.as_view` class method which returns a

function that can be called when a request arrives for a URL matching the

associated pattern. The function creates an instance of the class, calls

:meth:`~django.views.generic.base.View.setup` to initialize its attributes, and

then calls its :meth:`~django.views.generic.base.View.dispatch` method.

``dispatch`` looks at the request to determine whether it is a ``GET``,

``POST``, etc, and relays the request to a matching method if one is defined,

or raises :class:`~django.http.HttpResponseNotAllowed` if not::

    # urls.py

    from django.urls import path

    from myapp.views import MyView

    urlpatterns = [

        path('about/', MyView.as_view()),

    ]

It is worth noting that what your method returns is identical to what you

return from a function-based view, namely some form of

:class:`~django.http.HttpResponse`. This means that

:doc:`http shortcuts </topics/http/shortcuts>` or

:class:`~django.template.response.TemplateResponse` objects are valid to use

inside a class-based view.

While a minimal class-based view does not require any class attributes to

perform its job, class attributes are useful in many class-based designs,

and there are two ways to configure or set class attributes.

The first is the standard Python way of subclassing and overriding attributes

and methods in the subclass. So that if your parent class had an attribute

``greeting`` like this::

    from django.http import HttpResponse

    from django.views import View

    class GreetingView(View):

        greeting = "Good Day"

        def get(self, request):

            return HttpResponse(self.greeting)

You can override that in a subclass::

    class MorningGreetingView(GreetingView):

        greeting = "Morning to ya"

Another option is to configure class attributes as keyword arguments to the

:meth:`~django.views.generic.base.View.as_view` call in the URLconf::

    urlpatterns = [

        path('about/', GreetingView.as_view(greeting="G'day")),

    ]

.. note::

    While your class is instantiated for each request dispatched to it, class

    attributes set through the

    :meth:`~django.views.generic.base.View.as_view` entry point are

    configured only once at the time your URLs are imported.

Using mixins

============

Mixins are a form of multiple inheritance where behaviors and attributes of

multiple parent classes can be combined.

For example, in the generic class-based views there is a mixin called

:class:`~django.views.generic.base.TemplateResponseMixin` whose primary purpose

is to define the method

:meth:`~django.views.generic.base.TemplateResponseMixin.render_to_response`.

When combined with the behavior of the :class:`~django.views.generic.base.View`

base class, the result is a :class:`~django.views.generic.base.TemplateView`

class that will dispatch requests to the appropriate matching methods (a

behavior defined in the ``View`` base class), and that has a

:meth:`~django.views.generic.base.TemplateResponseMixin.render_to_response`

method that uses a

:attr:`~django.views.generic.base.TemplateResponseMixin.template_name`

attribute to return a :class:`~django.template.response.TemplateResponse`

object (a behavior defined in the ``TemplateResponseMixin``).

Mixins are an excellent way of reusing code across multiple classes, but they

come with some cost. The more your code is scattered among mixins, the harder

it will be to read a child class and know what exactly it is doing, and the

harder it will be to know which methods from which mixins to override if you

are subclassing something that has a deep inheritance tree.

Note also that you can only inherit from one generic view - that is, only one

parent class may inherit from :class:`~django.views.generic.base.View` and

the rest (if any) should be mixins. Trying to inherit from more than one class

that inherits from ``View`` - for example, trying to use a form at the top of a

list and combining :class:`~django.views.generic.edit.ProcessFormView` and

:class:`~django.views.generic.list.ListView` - won't work as expected.

Handling forms with class-based views

=====================================

A basic function-based view that handles forms may look something like this::

    from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect

    from django.shortcuts import render

    from .forms import MyForm

    def myview(request):

        if request.method == "POST":

            form = MyForm(request.POST)

            if form.is_valid():

                # <process form cleaned data>

                return HttpResponseRedirect('/success/')

        else:

            form = MyForm(initial={'key': 'value'})

        return render(request, 'form_template.html', {'form': form})

A similar class-based view might look like::

    from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect

    from django.shortcuts import render

    from django.views import View

    from .forms import MyForm

    class MyFormView(View):

        form_class = MyForm

        initial = {'key': 'value'}

        template_name = 'form_template.html'

        def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):

            form = self.form_class(initial=self.initial)

            return render(request, self.template_name, {'form': form})

        def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):

            form = self.form_class(request.POST)

            if form.is_valid():

                # <process form cleaned data>

                return HttpResponseRedirect('/success/')

            return render(request, self.template_name, {'form': form})

This is a minimal case, but you can see that you would then have the option

of customizing this view by overriding any of the class attributes, e.g.

``form_class``, via URLconf configuration, or subclassing and overriding one or

more of the methods (or both!).

Decorating class-based views

============================

The extension of class-based views isn't limited to using mixins. You can also

use decorators. Since class-based views aren't functions, decorating them works

differently depending on if you're using ``as_view()`` or creating a subclass.

Decorating in URLconf

---------------------

You can adjust class-based views by decorating the result of the

:meth:`~django.views.generic.base.View.as_view` method. The easiest place to do

this is in the URLconf where you deploy your view::

    from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required, permission_required

    from django.views.generic import TemplateView

    from .views import VoteView

    urlpatterns = [

        path('about/', login_required(TemplateView.as_view(template_name="secret.html"))),

        path('vote/', permission_required('polls.can_vote')(VoteView.as_view())),

    ]

This approach applies the decorator on a per-instance basis. If you

want every instance of a view to be decorated, you need to take a

different approach.

.. _decorating-class-based-views:

Decorating the class

--------------------

To decorate every instance of a class-based view, you need to decorate

the class definition itself. To do this you apply the decorator to the

:meth:`~django.views.generic.base.View.dispatch` method of the class.

A method on a class isn't quite the same as a standalone function, so you can't

just apply a function decorator to the method -- you need to transform it into

a method decorator first. The ``method_decorator`` decorator transforms a

function decorator into a method decorator so that it can be used on an

instance method. For example::

    from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required

    from django.utils.decorators import method_decorator

    from django.views.generic import TemplateView

    class ProtectedView(TemplateView):

        template_name = 'secret.html'

        @method_decorator(login_required)

        def dispatch(self, *args, **kwargs):

            return super().dispatch(*args, **kwargs)

Or, more succinctly, you can decorate the class instead and pass the name

of the method to be decorated as the keyword argument ``name``::

    @method_decorator(login_required, name='dispatch')

    class ProtectedView(TemplateView):

        template_name = 'secret.html'

If you have a set of common decorators used in several places, you can define

a list or tuple of decorators and use this instead of invoking

``method_decorator()`` multiple times. These two classes are equivalent::

    decorators = [never_cache, login_required]

    @method_decorator(decorators, name='dispatch')

    class ProtectedView(TemplateView):

        template_name = 'secret.html'

    @method_decorator(never_cache, name='dispatch')

    @method_decorator(login_required, name='dispatch')

    class ProtectedView(TemplateView):

        template_name = 'secret.html'

The decorators will process a request in the order they are passed to the

decorator. In the example, ``never_cache()`` will process the request before

``login_required()``.

In this example, every instance of ``ProtectedView`` will have login

protection. These examples use ``login_required``, however, the same behavior

can be obtained by using

:class:`~django.contrib.auth.mixins.LoginRequiredMixin`.

.. note::

    ``method_decorator`` passes ``*args`` and ``**kwargs``

    as parameters to the decorated method on the class. If your method

    does not accept a compatible set of parameters it will raise a

    ``TypeError`` exception.