[django] Django request.GET

It seems I can't make this example print "You submitted nothing!". Every time I submit an empty form it says:

You submitted: u''

instead of:

You submitted nothing!

Where did I go wrong?

views.py

def search(request):
    if 'q' in request.GET:
        message = 'You submitted: %r' % request.GET['q']
    else:
        message = 'You submitted nothing!'

    return HttpResponse(message)

template:

<html>
    <head>
        <title> Search </title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <form action="/search/"  method="get" >
        <input type="text" name = "q">
        <input type="submit"value="Search"/>
        </form>
    </body>
</html>

This question is related to django request

The answer is


Calling /search/ should result in "you submitted nothing", but calling /search/?q= on the other hand should result in "you submitted u''"

Browsers have to add the q= even when it's empty, because they have to include all fields which are part of the form. Only if you do some DOM manipulation in Javascript (or a custom javascript submit action), you might get such a behavior, but only if the user has javascript enabled. So you should probably simply test for non-empty strings, e.g:

if request.GET.get('q'):
    message = 'You submitted: %r' % request.GET['q']
else:
    message = 'You submitted nothing!'

msg = request.GET.get('q','default')
if (msg == default):
    message = "YOU SUBMITTED NOTHING"
else: 
    message = "you submitted = %s" %msg"
return HttpResponse(message);

Here is a good way to do it.

from django.utils.datastructures import MultiValueDictKeyError
try:
    message = 'You submitted: %r' % request.GET['q']
except MultiValueDictKeyError:
    message = 'You submitted nothing!'

You don't need to check again if q is in GET request. The call in the QueryDict.get already does that to you.


since your form has a field called 'q', leaving it blank still sends an empty string.

try

if 'q' in request.GET and request.GET['q'] != "" :
     message
else
     error message

from django.http import QueryDict

def search(request):
if request.GET.\__contains__("q"):
    message = 'You submitted: %r' % request.GET['q']
else:
    message = 'You submitted nothing!'
return HttpResponse(message)

Use this way, django offical document recommended __contains__ method. See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/ref/request-response/


def search(request):
if 'q' in request.GET.keys():
    message = 'You submitted: %r' % request.GET['q']
else:
    message = 'You submitted nothing!'

return HttpResponse(message)

you can use if ... in too.


In python, None, 0, ""(empty string), False are all accepted None.

So:

if request.GET['q']: // true if q contains anything but not ""
    message
else : //// since this returns "" ant this is equals to None
    error

q = request.GET.get("q", None)
if q:
    message = 'q= %s' % q
else:
    message = 'Empty'