[Answered ]-Django/Haystack – best option to have a listview with search capability

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There probably is out there some package that gives you everything automatically, displaying the queryset list and allowing simple adding of a search bar and so on (like the admin site). But I take it you are still a beginner to web development, so I’d strongly suggest you drop the listviews, drop haystack, drop everything, and do it all yourself.

See, they’re not bad approaches or anything, but they’re like shortcuts. And shortcuts are good only if they shorten the original way, which in your case isn’t all that long.

To give you an example, here’s a simple approach to displaying a list of items:

views.py

def restaraunt_list(request):
    restaraunts = Restaraunt.objects.all().order_by('name')[:100] # Just for example purposes. You can order them how you'd like, and you probably want to add pagination instead of limiting the view number arbitrarily

    context = {'restaraunts': restaraunts}
    return render_to_response('index.html', context)

index.html:

<ul>
{% for rest in restaraunts %}
    <li>{{ rest }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>

That’s it. Now it displays it in a list. Now to add a search filter all you need to do is this:

index.html (add this anywhere you want it)

<form>
    <input type='text' name='q' id='q'></input>
    <input type='submit' value='search!'></input>
</form>

When a user sends the data from ‘q’ it is sent through GET, and then on server side you add this:

def restaraunt_list(request):
    restaraunts = Restaraunt.objects.all()

    # filter results!
    if request.method == 'GET':
        q = request.GET['q']
        if q != '':
            restaraunts = restaraunts.filter(name__contains=q)

    # ordering is the last thing you do
    restaraunts = restaraunts.order_by('name')[:100] 

    context = {'restaraunts': restaraunts}
    return render_to_response('index.html', context)

Now, this will work, but from what you wrote I understand you want the search to be live the moment a key is pressed. For that, you’d need to use AJAX (go learn how it works, I’m not gonna delve into it here). As for autocomplete, you should check out jQuery UI.

But, like I said, before jumping ahead and using all those stuff, I suggest you first learn the basics. Go through the django tutorial (if you haven’t already), and use the amazingly detailed django-docs every step of the way. When some specific things won’t work and you’re stuck, come here to Stackoverflow and someone will surely help you. good luck!

👤yuvi

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