Daniel Roy Greenfeld

Daniel Roy Greenfeld

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Stay with the Django CBV defaults!

One virtue of Django Class Based Views (CBVs) is that they come with pretty good default settings. The virtue of this is you can really pare your code down in size and complexity.

For example, here is an implementation of CBVs based on a straight-forward Django model , stuffage.models.Stuff, that has a get_absolute_url method:

stuffage/views.py:

from django.views import generic

from stuffage.models import Stuff

class StuffDetailView(generic.DetailView):
    model = Stuff

class StuffListView(generic.ListView):
    model = Stuff

class StuffCreateView(generic.CreateView):
    model = Stuff

class StuffUpdateView(generic.UpdateView):
    model = Stuff

stuffage/urls.py:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import patterns, url, include

from stuffage import views

urlpatterns = patterns("",

    url(
        regex=r"^create/$",
        view=views.StuffCreateView.as_view(),
        name="stuff_create",
    ),
    url(
        regex=r"^update/(?P<pk>\d+)/$",
        view=views.StuffUpdateView.as_view(),
        name="stuff_update",
    ),
    url(
        regex=r"^(?P<pk>\d+)/$",
        view=views.StuffDetailView.as_view(),
        name="stuff_detail",
    ),
    url(
        regex=r"^$",
        view=views.StuffListView.as_view(),
        name="stuff_list",
    ),
)

These four CBVs will default to the following three templates without any action on my part:

stuffage/stuff_detail.html (StuffDetailView)
stuffage/stuff_form.html (StuffCreateView, StuffUpdateView)
stuffage/stuff_list.html (StuffListView)

So easy I use a simple script to render all this code!

What about doing this all in the urls.py?

Yes, I could do this all in the urls.py, but real Django code involves doing some logic in views, no matter how skinny you try to make said views. While I'm a huge proponent of logic in fat models, invariably I'm adding to the view context, or doing something else that requires tweaking of CBV settings.

The problem

One trait of developers is we like to tinker.

Unfortunately, I keep seeing developers tinkering on the settings for Django CBVs without any reason besides tinkeringWhich means you get things like:

unfortunately tinkered stuffage/views.py

# 1. Using template_name means extra code and extra developer lookup time.
# 2. Changing the context_object_name means extra code  and extra developer     
#       lookup time.
class StuffDetailView(generic.DetailView):
    model = Stuff
    template_name = "stuffage/stuffs.html"
    context_object_name = 'stuff'

unfortunately tinkered stuffage/urls.py

# 1. Logic into your URLConf should be kept to a minimum
# 2. Unless you are using the same view more than once, specifying the
#       template_name here is a waste of code. And makes it harder to
#       understand the view.
url(
    regex=r"^$",
    view=views.StuffListView.as_view(template_name="stuffage/stuffs.html"),
    name="stuff_list",
),

# No matter how fat your models get, you always end up extending all views,
#   so this will have to be moved into the formal views.py at some point. So
#   why not start with it in the views.py in the first place.
url(
    regex=r"^$",
    view=ListView.as_view(
        model=Stuff,
        template_name="stuffage/stuffs.html"),
    name="stuff_list",
),

Don't forget you can also tinker/tweak formats and slug/pk identifier defaults, and a ton of other things that are part of Django CBVs. While this gives you great power, if misused that power can cause grief in terms of code obfuscation and the need for additional testing.

My opinion is that these defaults were meant as a standard for the CBV to operate, upon which developers familiar with the Django CBV API could extend and expand their code for minimal effort. Yes, you can tweak them to match your preferred patterns, but that's extra work. Work you shouldn't be doing if you can avoid it.

My Advice

Stick with the defaults and only modify behavior that actually needs to be modified. For example, if you want to show multiple versions of a ListView you might do something like:

stuffage/urls.py with a pydanny approved use of template_name

url(
    regex=r"^$",
    view=views.StuffListView.as_view(),
    name="stuff_list",
),

# Same view but with a template designed to show larger list items.
url(
    regex=r"^large/$",
    view=views.StuffListView.as_view(template_name="stuffage/stuff_list_large.html"),
    name="stuff_list_large",
),

Summary

This is the pattern I follow when I build projects. I stick to the framework standard as much as possible. Since many systems rely on convention over configuration, this makes it easier and faster to develop projects, be it Django, Twisted, or some other tool.

It's the work you can see in my recent public projects, and what I want to port to long existing sites like Django Packages.


Tags: python rant django python howto class-based-views
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