Django: How do I extend the same functionality to many views?

Question

I have a parent template that I'm using in many parts of the site, called base.html. This template holds a lot of functional components, such as buttons that trigger different forms (inside modal windows) allowing users to upload different kinds of content, etc. I want users to be able to click these buttons from almost any part of the site (from all the templates that inherit from base.html).

I've written a view that handles the main page of the site, HomeView (it renders homepage.html, which inherits from base.html). I've written a bunch of functionality into this view, which handles all the uploads.

Since many templates are going to inherit from base.html, and therefore have all that same functionality, do I have to copy-and-paste the hundreds of lines of code from the HomeView into the views that render all the other pages??

There's got to be a better way, right?

How do I make sure that the functionality in a parent base template holds true for all views which call child templates that inherit from this base template?

Answer 1

you can put all the lines of code from HomeView in a separate function let be func
and have func return a dictionary containing all context variables needed
and call it whenever needed so your HomeView would look like this:

def HomeView(request):
  dict = func(request)
  ... # rest of code that is not common with other views

and your func would look like:

def func(request):
  #all repeated code
  #put all needed variables in a dictionary and return it
  dict = {'var1': 4, 'var2': "a String" ...}
  return dict

Answer 2

I believe separating out your upload related functionality into separate views will be better way to go about it. That way all your templates (inheriting from base.html) will refer to appropriate view for uploads.

You can use HTTP_REFERER header to redirect to appropriate page from the upload views.

Answer 3

You can render many templates in just one view by requiring unique value in each or use request session.

Answer 4

1. Use TemplateResponse instead of HttpResponse in home_view. This way you will be able to update context and switch template on the response.

2. Call home_view inside other views like this:

   from django.template.response import TemplateResponse
   
   def other_view( request ):
   
       #produce other_context
   
       t = home_view( request )
       t.context.update( other_context )
       t.template = 'other_template.html'
       return t
   

Answer 5

Load the functionality part with ajax on your base.html.

That way you have a view_method that deals exclusively with those funcionalities.