TemplateView

The first generic class based view that most people use is the template view. 0:00 You've probably already guessed, but this view automatically renders a template. 0:04 The easiest way to use this view is just to provide it with a template name and 0:08 set up a route, but this gives me a great opportunity to show you how to override 0:11 this class's built-in methods to start customizing your views. 0:15 I'll see you in work spaces. 0:19 All right, so template views are pretty similar to regular old view views, 0:21 like the one you wanna use for hello world view. 0:26 Now, like I said in the first video though or like I said in the first video, that 0:28 home view, this one right here, would be a great one to replace with a template view. 0:32 Now before I can do that though, I need to import the template view class, so. 0:38 View, TemplateView. 0:44 I'll just import both of those. 0:46 And then, well I should use it. 0:48 So I'm gonna put this one right here, right below home so 0:50 that you can see both of them together. 0:54 So HomeView, this is a TemplateView, and 0:55 then I use set the template name cuz TemplateViews render templates. 1:01 And just like the one above it, this is going to render the home.HTML template. 1:05 So, I would argue that my class is less code than the function. 1:11 Maybe not though. 1:17 Maybe I'm wrong. 1:18 But anyway, with equal amounts or less code. 1:19 I'm done. 1:23 I've got the view created. 1:23 Now, I do need to still create the URL though. 1:26 Before I go change the URL though, I wanna talk about something just for a second. 1:29 All I've customized in this class is this template name attribute, that's it. 1:33 As you probably guessed, this attribute controls what template the view renders. 1:39 I have tons of others that I can set to like, what template engine do use or 1:43 the content type to return the view has all the stuff. 1:48 I'll be doing a lot more customizing of these things and 1:52 their associated methods later on. 1:55 Let's go make that URL. 1:58 So I'm actually not gonna make a URL though, I'm just gonna change this one. 2:00 So right now, I have this views.home. 2:04 So I'm gonna change those under views.HomeView, 2:06 that's what I named it, right? 2:09 HomeView, and then I'm gonna call as_view, just like before. 2:11 On the HelloWorld. 2:18 So you always end up calling this as view thing, using it really used to doing that. 2:20 Okay, so now, if I go and I look at the the very base of my site. 2:25 I should see the exact same template that I saw before, looks the same to me. 2:32 Yeah, same old thing. 2:37 Now, one thing that I wanna point out even though you probably already knew it, 2:38 I don't have to put the word view into the class names. 2:42 In fact, I mentioned this last time. 2:45 I don't have to put view in here. 2:47 That's that's not required at all. 2:49 I just like doing that so that I know it's a view any time I see the name 2:52 because you might see a name out of context. 2:55 Maybe inside documentation or a poor request or a whatever. 2:57 If you'd rather just call it home or home page or whatever, go for it. 3:02 Use names that make sense to you and the people that you're working with. 3:07 What though if I need to add or change some context that when I'm into the view? 3:10 Well, welcome to your first major customization. 3:16 Major maybe an overstatement there. 3:19 Now, since I set the template name attribute, and 3:21 obvious thing to change would be the get template name method, 3:24 which is the method that's called for getting the template name. 3:28 But we don't have time for the obvious, right? 3:31 You wanna do something more fun. 3:33 So the method that I wanna override is get context data. 3:35 So let's stub this out real quick. 3:38 So, def get_context_data, and 3:40 it takes two arguments, it takes (self, **kwargs). 3:43 If the name wasn't a dead giveaway, this method is used for getting or actually 3:49 even generating the context dictionary that's used for rendering the template. 3:54 This is used in set of supplying a dictionary directly. 3:59 This method doesn't do a whole lot on its own but 4:03 I don't want to erase the work that it does do. 4:05 So, I'm gonna go ahead and use super to get back the results of all the versions 4:07 of this method, all the way up the stack. 4:11 This is a good habit. 4:14 You'll wanna get into this one too. 4:14 So, context = super ().get_context_data(**kwargs). 4:15 And now I want to add a key to the context, I'm going to add up 4:25 made up number for the number of games that are being played today. 4:30 This was a real site, I'd pull that number from a database somewhere but 4:35 you've gotta make do with what you have. 4:38 So context, which I can spell, ["games_today"] = 6, okay? 4:40 And then, I'm done. 4:48 And I need to make sure the dictionary comes back out so 4:50 I'm gonna return context, okay. 4:52 So now though, I need to update the dictionary. 4:55 So we know, sorry not dictionary, I need to update the template. 4:59 The template, you know, the template. 5:01 So I know by looking at this that it's the home template, and since it 5:04 doesn't belong to an app, I'm gonna guess it's here in this templates folder, and 5:10 what do you now I'm right, there is home.html. 5:14 So I'm gonna add this paragraph and write down here below this, 5:19 this is the easiest way bit. 5:22 So I'll do a p, and then I'll say, 5:26 There {{ games_todaylpluralize:" 5:32 is,are"}} {{ games_today}} 5:38 game{{ games_todaylpluralize }} today!. 5:44 Okay so, this is using the pluralize filter to handle changing is and 5:52 are depending on how many games that are printing out the number of games, 5:57 and then pluralizing game based on how many games there are today. 6:03 Now, games today comes from here where I set it in my context dictionary. 6:08 So, with this updated template and this updated bit of view, if I refresh this, 6:14 I should get a paragraph telling me how many games there are today. 6:19 And I do, there it is, 6:24 so there are 6 games today, that's good because that's the number that I set. 6:24 Well you might not find yourself using template view itself all the time, 6:30 you'll probably be using views that integrate a lot of the abilities of 6:33 template view, because well, most of the time, you'll be rendering a template. 6:36 Okay, I think it's time to move into view classes that make use of models. 6:41 Take a little break, get a snack, or take a walk, and then come back for list and 6:44 detail views. 6:48