Goal
Add functionalities such as pagination, ordering and searching in HTML form using DRF
Objectives
- Create HTML forms and add new items
- Add pagination settings for DRF form
- Add filtering options such as ordering and searching
Introduction
In this project, I created a model called Category and another model called Menu that has a many-to-one relationship with the model Category. I used DRF to add searching and ordering functionalities. I also learned how to generate a view consisting of a specific number of items from a table that will be displayed on a page.
Open the Terminal and run both commands to perform migrations. Once the migrations are performed successfully, run the command to start the server on localhost and go to the URL:
http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/category
Update the data entries in the form as follows:
- Title: Main
- Title: Desserts
- Title: Appetizers
On updating, the entries should appear as below:
Now go to the URL for menu-items by adding the link inside the browser:
http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/menu-items
Now click on the Filter button that you can see on the page and under the options listed, click on the option price – ascending.
Scroll through the items listed and note the price listed is set to ascending order of value.
You can try different order options from the list and note the changes in the order of the menu items displayed.
Click on the Filter option again and below the Search option, enter the value "Pasta" in the text field and click on the Search button to the right.
The result displayed should return all the relevant items that contain the substring "pasta" inside it.
Notice that the specific total count has also been updated to 2.
Also, note how the search results displayed are case-insensitive and will return results irrespective of the case used.
Now go to the Search option inside the Filter one more time and search for the term main inside it.
The count of results displayed this time will be null. This shows that the search only displays items present for the options configured inside the view function which in this case will be the 'title' inside the Menu model. The term main , which is a type of category, will not be a part of the search. Other entries such as entering 4.00 in the search box will also return null, as the count with empty list as the result. And will return an empty list showing "count" as 0.
Concluding Thoughts
In this lab, I practiced configuring the settings for pagination in DRF. I also learned how to add filtering options such as ordering and searching inside the form data. Finally, I used DRF to implement models having a many-to-one relationship.