[Django]-Removing query string from url in django while keeping GET information

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First a word of caution. This is probably not a good idea to do for various reasons:

  • Bookmarking. Imagine that .../link?q=bar&order=foo will filter some search results and also sort the results in particular order. If you will automatically strip out the querystring, then you will effectively disallow users to bookmark specific search queries.
  • Tests. Any time you add any automation, things can and will probably go wrong in ways you never imagined. It is always better to stick with simple yet effective approaches since they are widely used thus are less error-prone. Ill give an example for this below.
  • Maintenance. This is not a standard behavior model therefore this will make maintenance harder for future developers since first they will have to understand first what is going on.

If you still want to achieve this, one of the simplest methods is to use sessions. The idea is that when there is a querystring, you save its contents into a session and then you retrieve it later on when there is no querystring. For example:

def testrun(request, testrun_id):
    # save the get data
    if request.META['QUERY_STRING']:
        request.session['testrun_get'] = request.GET
        # the following will not have querystring hence no infinite loop
        return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('testrun', args=(testrun_id,)))

    # there is no querystring so retreive it from session
    # however someone could visit the url without the querystring
    # without visiting the querystring version first hence
    # you have to test for it
    get_data = request.session.get('testrun_get', None)
    if get_data:
        if 'list_options' in get_data.keys():
            ...
    else:
        # do some default option
        ...

    context = { ...stuff... }
    return render(request, 'test_tracker/testview.html', context)

That should work however it can break rather easily and there is no way to easily fix it. This should illustrate the second bullet from above. For example, imagine a user wants to compare two search queries side-by-side. So he will try to visit .../link?q=bar&order=foo and `.../link?q=cat&order=dog in different tabs of the same browser. So far so good because each page will open correct results however as soon as the user will try to refresh the first opened tab, he will get results from the second tab since that is what is currently stored in the session and because browser will have a single session token for both tabs.

Even if you will find some other method to achieve what you want without using sessions, I imagine that you will encounter similar issues because HTTP is stateless hence you will have to store state on the server.

There is actually a way to do this without breaking much of the functionality – store state on client instead of server-side. So you will have a url without a querystring and then let javascript query some API for whatever you will need to display on that page. That however will force you to make some sort of API and use some javascript which does not exactly fall into the scope of your question. So it is possible to do cleanly however that will involve more than just using Django.

👤miki725

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