Django API Requests

Question

I am trying to access another service API using model fields as keywords in an API request. The url will look like this:

http://api.example.com/json/?first_name=FNAME&last_name=LNAME&key={key} 

Here is my code from views.py:

 class ExamplePersonView(ListView): context_object_name = "example_person" template_name = "templates/example_person.html" def get_queryset(self): lname = get_object_or_404(ExamplePeople, lname__iexact=self.args[0]) return ExamplePeople.objects.filter(lname=lname) 

From what I understand, I need to use AJAX to communicate between my page template and my view.py in order to send a request and then present the information on the page.

I found several Django applications that make it easy to turn your models into an open API, but none of them will help you access the API from another service. Does anyone know about such an application?

If not, does anyone have a good understanding of using AJAX with Django to make a request and present it in a template?

Answer 1

There are several ways to communicate with the “foreign” API. No need for ajax. Ajax is only for creating background calls in a template, triggering any event that you have in mind.

But let's say you want to chat with facebook GraphAPI to get a profile

http://graph.facebook.com/bill.clinton

The standard result is serialized as JSON, which is easily implemented in AJAX or any JavaScript library, hence the name JavaScript Object Notation.

So an example with AJAX could be:

 function callFacebook() { $.ajax({ type: "GET", data: ({}), dataType: 'json', url: "http://graph.facebook.com/bill.clinton", success: function(data){ alert("Hi I am former "+data.name); } }); } callFacebook(); 

Include this in your javascript file or in your template between script tags, and you should get a nice message:

Hi i am former president bill clinton

Now you can include this warning in something more meaningful and put it in the h1 tag (you don't know why this makes sense)

 $("body").html("<h1>"+data.name+"</h1>"); 

But sometimes you would like to get data and do something with it on the server side in your application.

Create django urlpattern and view, for example:

 from urllib2 import urlopen from django.http import HttpResponse from django.utils import simplejson def call_bill(request): url = "http://graph.facebook.com/bill.clinton" json = urlopen(url).read() # do whatever you want return HttpResponse(simplejson.dumps(json), mimetype="application/json") # add this to your url patterns url("^call_bill_clinton/$", call_bill) 

Now go to your url

As a logical result, it is also quite possible to initiate asynchronous events through some user action. For example, the URL parameter in the previous ajax example could also be a django URL, such as "/ call_bill_clinton /".

 <!-- add a button to call the function --> <button onclick="callFacebook();">Call Bill</button> function callFacebook() { $.ajax({ type: "GET", data: ({}), dataType: 'json', url: "/call_bill_clinton/", success: function(data){ alert("Hi I am former "+data.name+" and I came from Django"); } }); ) // remove the auto call 

In addition, ajax calls allow you to do the same tricks as HTTP requests, you can use various request methods in combination with cool javascript events, for example, before the sendSend event

  beforeSend: function() { $('#loading').show(); }, 

Where #loading might look something like this:

  <div id="loading" style="display:none;"> <img src="{% static "images/loading.gif" %}" /> </div>