Rob Conner's Blog - Internet Technology & Web Engineering

Extending the request object

August 10, 2007

When working with Django there were a few things that I felt could be shortened just by simply extending the request object. I added a few methods onto it so that some tasks were easier. For example: regarding redirects, I was not a big fan of the "HttpResponseRedirect(reverse(url))" syntax. Redirects are a fairly common thing. I did not enjoy having to import two methods and then write such a long line of code. So what I did was add a redirect method onto request. Now all I do is call "request.redirect(url)" and the redirect is performed. The same goes for rendering. I felt that "render_to_response" was a bit too much. Now I simply call "request.render(file)" to render a template. Its simple and powerful. These functions make my life a good bit easier. I thought I'd share them with you all. You'll add this in as Middleware. Be aware you must use RequestContext in your app to use this Middleware. <div class="code"><pre>import new from django.core.handlers.wsgi import WSGIRequest from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse from django.contrib.sessions.middleware import SessionWrapper from django.template import RequestContext, add_to_builtins from django.shortcuts import render_to_response ## ## Request Handler Middleware ## # Really I would like to add these, but don't currently have need or know-how # - is_rss() # - is_atom() # - is_mobile() # - is_wap() # - is_mobile() def _is_ajax(self): return self.META.get('HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH') == 'XMLHttpRequest' def _is_get(self): return self.method == 'GET' def _is_post(self): return self.method == 'POST' def _is_put(self): return self.method == 'PUT' # Simple redirect that handles most normal use def _redirect(self, url, *args, **kwArgs): return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse(url, *args, **kwArgs)) # Ideally I woulnd't want this in here, but RequestContext forced me def _render(self, template, data=()): return render_to_response(template, data, context_instance=RequestContext(self)) class RequestHandlerMiddleware(object): def process_request(self, request): request.is_ajax = new.instancemethod(_is_ajax, request, WSGIRequest) request.is_get = new.instancemethod(_is_get, request, WSGIRequest) request.is_post = new.instancemethod(_is_post, request, WSGIRequest) request.is_put = new.instancemethod(_is_put, request, WSGIRequest) request.redirect = new.instancemethod(_redirect, request, WSGIRequest) request.render = new.instancemethod(_render, request, WSGIRequest) return None </pre></div> <div style='display:none'> import new from django.core.handlers.wsgi import WSGIRequest from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse from django.contrib.sessions.middleware import SessionWrapper from django.template import RequestContext, add_to_builtins from django.shortcuts import render_to_response ## ## Request Handler Middleware ## # Really I would like to add these, but don't currently have need or know-how # - is_rss() # - is_atom() # - is_mobile() # - is_wap() # - is_mobile() def _is_ajax(self): return self.META.get('HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH') == 'XMLHttpRequest' def _is_get(self): return self.method == 'GET' def _is_post(self): return self.method == 'POST' def _is_put(self): return self.method == 'PUT' # Simple redirect that handles most normal use def _redirect(self, url, *args, **kwArgs): return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse(url, *args, **kwArgs)) # Ideally I woulnd't want this in here, but RequestContext forced me def _render(self, template, data=()): return render_to_response(template, data, context_instance=RequestContext(self)) class RequestHandlerMiddleware(object): def process_request(self, request): request.is_ajax = new.instancemethod(_is_ajax, request, WSGIRequest) request.is_get = new.instancemethod(_is_get, request, WSGIRequest) request.is_post = new.instancemethod(_is_post, request, WSGIRequest) request.is_put = new.instancemethod(_is_put, request, WSGIRequest) request.redirect = new.instancemethod(_redirect, request, WSGIRequest) request.render = new.instancemethod(_render, request, WSGIRequest) return None </div>

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Extending the request object