Django: The Easy Form Views Pattern Controversy

http://pydanny.com/the-easy-form-views-pattern-controversy.html

by pydanny • 13 years ago

14 5 13 years ago

So right off the bat, explicit linkbait: This isn't a controversy 'per se', except perhaps in the feverish depths of my brain.

Of course the intention was to get attention, though if you're going to post something here with a blatant grab for clicks, shouldn't you at least include some content? Not only do you state right up front that it's unlikely anyone but you will find this controversial, you present a point made to you showing that the approach you're discussing is fundamentally flawed.

Summary: "This is what I did. It saved me about three lines of code. Then someone pointed out that I was actually mishandling requests by ignoring the framework's explicitly-available standard identifier provided to me for exactly this purpose. Not only that, it causes inconsistent misbehavior in different versions of the framework."

I'm certainly guilty of looking for ways to cut corners like this -- I think we all are -- but being up front about "this was a bad idea" and changing the tone of the article to reflect a lesson learned instead of what's very clearly a suggestion you later discovered you shouldn't have been making would've made it a much more useful and succinct read.

pydanny2• 13 years ago

It wasn't intentional.

I've been asked to post this on my blog for years. At the same time, I've had a number of people I respect state that it's not a good idea. I wasn't sure how to handle things, so I wrote this in one big chunk.

However, I think you may have a point about the tone. Let me think on it.

pydanny2• 13 years ago

I changed the text in places and took out the leading sentence. Thanks for this comment.

dschep• 13 years ago

Why not just use this:

    form = MyForm(request.POST if request.method == 'POST' else None)

daGrevis• 13 years ago

This is more explicit, hence better.

Django: The Easy Form Views Pattern Controversy

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