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We can create forms and show them to users, but for forms to be really useful, we need to be able to process them once they're submitted.
I know it seems longwinded to do the FormClass(request.POST) and then form.is_valid() dance, but it's a solid, time-tested approach to handling forms. Even though it's longer, I definitely encourage you to stick with it.
In our last video, we handled showing
a form, when someone requested a view.
0:00
This is known in HTTP
parlance as a get request.
0:04
When we submit our form, though,
0:08
we don't want to put information into
the URL, which a get request would do.
0:10
We want the data to be safely transmitted
behind the scenes, in our HTTP headers, so
0:14
we'll use a post request.
0:19
That means though that we have to do
a bit of extra work in our review
0:21
to process the form.
0:24
But hey, I know that we can do it.
0:26
Okay, so we should be all
done with creating our form,
0:28
our URL, and our HTML template.
0:33
All the work we have to do now
should be just inside of our views.
0:35
If we come here and we let me refresh
this just make sure its good and
0:40
we put in a name and an email address and
a suggestion like cover pyramid and
0:46
we hit submit like nothing happens right?
0:53
We can come back over here and
we see that we just got a post, and
0:57
I gave it 200,
because our view doesn't care.
1:02
Anytime a request comes in, get,
1:06
post, put, delete, patch,
whatever, our view doesn't care.
1:10
Our view just goes to the exact same
work every single time, no matter what.
1:14
So we need to make it were our
view pays attention to the kind of
1:19
request that comes in.
1:24
So, let's go here and let's add, let's
just leave our form like that for now.
1:26
And then we'll do an if.
1:34
And we'll say request.method
is equal to POST.
1:37
And it'll always be all caps like that.
1:41
So if a POST request comes in,
then we want to do something different.
1:43
What we want to do here is, we want to
do form equals forms.SuggestionForm and
1:48
we want to give it the data
from request.post.
1:55
So what this does is it takes all
of the form data that comes in and
1:59
puts it into the form, and
where the keys line up.
2:03
So request.post is kind
of like a dictionary.
2:06
It has keys, and the keys have values.
2:10
So where the key, Name is,
2:13
or where the key Email is,
it'll put that into the form.
2:17
So it just fills in
the data from the request.
2:21
So that's cool, that's handy.
2:24
Now we need to make sure the form is
valid, that they gave us good data.
2:26
So if form.is_valid,
then we need to do something.
2:30
Let's just print right now,
we'll just say good form and
2:37
then we won't run anything else.
2:41
We'll just leave that alone and
2:43
so then, that should be it for right now.
2:47
Okay, let's just stop right there for
right now.
2:51
So if it's a post then it's gonna
check to make sure it's valid.
2:53
And if it's valid,
then it's gonna tell us good form.
2:56
So let's try this again.
2:59
And we'll say Kenneth and
kenneth@example.com.
3:00
And we'll say Pygame!
3:04
Cuz a lot of people want Pygame.
3:07
So submit nothing's going to
change on the site except for
3:09
you see our data is still in there.
3:14
And if we look here it printed out good
form, so awesome, we know that it worked.
3:16
So what I want to do, is I want,
when somebody creates a suggestion,
3:21
I want it to send me an email.
3:25
And so to do that there's a couple of
pretty easy things that we can do.
3:27
So first of all we need to send an email.
3:32
So we need to go to settings.py and
3:35
it's way too much to ask that you all,
and even myself, actually send emails.
3:39
So Django has some handy built-in
email backends that we could
3:45
use and we can send emails just
into this little console here or
3:50
we can do what I'm gonna do in this one,
we can send emails into a file.
3:55
So we're gonna make a new setting here,
EMAIL_BACKEND and it's going to be
3:59
django.core.mail.backends.filebased.Email-
Backend.
4:04
That is a lot of words.
4:08
And then we have to
give it a file path for
4:14
where to put the files that it creates for
each email.
4:17
So we'll say EMAIL_FILE_PATH.
4:20
And that's gonna be os.path.join(BASE_DIR,
4:23
which is a variable we set up at
the top of this file and suggestions.
4:27
And Django will create this folder for us,
4:35
we don't have to create
this folder ourselves.
4:37
So that's all we have to do here,
so that just puts
4:38
the emails into a really handy,
really nice file format, okay?
4:44
So now,
let's come back over here to our views and
4:51
up here in our imports we need
to do a couple more imports.
4:55
So I'm gonna get a couple things ready.
4:59
Let's do from django.contrib
import messages
5:03
from django.core.mail import send mail,
5:07
which is a really handy little
function for sending mail.
5:12
From django.core.urlresolvers
import reverse.
5:15
And from django.http import
5:23
HttpResponseRedirect.
5:28
All right, so these are things we're
gonna need in just a little bit.
5:32
Let's minimize this down again.
5:36
All right so, now, right in here, where
we've been doing this form, is valid.
5:38
Let's see about sending our e-mail.
5:43
So, the first thing we do is we call,
send_mail, and
5:46
send mail requires a lot of argument,
so I'm gonna do multiple lines here.
5:50
So the first argument that goes
into send_mail is the subject.
5:54
So we're gonna say,
Suggestion from and a placeholder.
5:58
And we're gonna fill this
in with form.cleaned_data.
6:04
This is the good data that comes
out after the form is validated.
6:07
And we're gonna put in name.
6:10
All right?
6:14
And then we put in the body of the email,
so
6:14
this will be
form.cleaned_data['suggestion'].
6:17
And then we put in the email
address that it's from.
6:25
So we're gonna put in the name and
the email.
6:30
This might be a slightly different way of
using format that you haven't seen before
6:35
but you can feed it a dictionary and
6:38
it'll use the dictionary keys
to fill in these names here.
6:41
And form.cleaned_data has a field
called name and a field called email.
6:45
And then finally,
we put in who it gets sent to.
6:50
So I'm gonna send it to myself.
6:53
But since this isn't actually going
to go anywhere, it won't matter.
6:56
All right, so
that does the sending mail, and
7:01
then I also want to send them a message
on the website saying thank you for
7:02
your submission.
7:07
So we'll use the messages part of Django,
7:09
which lets us just put flash
messages up onto the screen.
7:11
And we're gonna say add message.
7:15
And we're gonna put in request,
7:17
messages.SUCCESS cuz they
successfully gave us a thing.
7:19
And we'll say, thanks for your suggestion!
7:24
And then finally and
you're gonna get used to doing this a lot.
7:29
We're gonna return HttpResponseRedirect
and we have to tell it where to go.
7:33
So we're gonna reverse
the URL to suggestion.
7:40
Let me make sure I named that correctly.
7:43
Yep, all right and so what reverse does is
7:45
it goes to your URLs.py finds
the URL that matches the name and
7:48
the arguments you give it and
figures out the URL that comes from it.
7:52
Okay, so we already have this.
7:56
If it's a post then we're
gonna do all this stuff.
7:59
We're gonna send the email,
we're gonna send a message, and
8:00
then we're gonna redirect
to somewhere else.
8:03
That redirect will be a get request,
and so
8:05
we'll get a blank form instead of a form
that already has some values filled out.
8:08
So let's just go ahead and
submit this again.
8:15
And if everything worked.
8:17
I don't know, maybe I don't have
the messages on there yet, but
8:19
let's look out here and
let's refresh this.
8:23
And we should see suggestions, and
then right here is a time stamp for
8:28
this thing and it's a log,
it doesn't know what it is.
8:32
Let's rename this to .TXD.
8:38
And it should be able to show it to us.
8:42
Close those let's open this file again.
8:47
There we go.
8:49
All right so
we can see it's from kenneth@example.com.
8:50
WIth the name of Kenneth and
it's going to me at teamtreehouse and
8:54
the suggestion was Pygame.
8:57
You could obviously expand on this
a lot further if you wanted to.
8:59
And so our message didn't show up and
I'm really not sure why.
9:03
But I'm gonna add in a snippet for that.
9:08
And then we will refresh our thing.
9:12
Cuz this is just way too much code for
me to type on camera.
9:18
So let's refresh.
9:23
There we go.
9:24
Thanks for your suggestion, and
9:24
we've got a little close button
that doesn't do anything.
9:26
All right, cool.
9:28
So this'll be in the workspace if
you wanna launch the workspace and
9:29
see what's in there.
9:34
This is all explained in
Django's documentation.
9:35
I'll put a link to that
in the teacher's notes.
9:38
There's a really common shortcut of
creating a form with request.POST or
9:41
None, and
then checking the validity of the form.
9:46
If it's invalid, you're in a GET request,
at least, that's the idea.
9:48
The problem is that it's 100% possible
to have a completely valid blank form.
9:53
It's also possible that
the request wasn't a POST.
9:58
Both of these things leave your
view in a somewhat ambiguous state.
10:01
Its better to be explicit like our
if that checked the requests type,
10:04
than to hope you remember your edge case,
10:08
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