View — The Glue Between Data and Display

Views in Pytigon are the orchestration layer — they take URL parameters, fetch data from models, apply business logic, and hand everything to templates for rendering. Pytigon's generic views handle 90% of common patterns, with hooks for the remaining 10%.

The View Hierarchy

Pytigon's view classes extend Django's class-based views with table-centric functionality:

django.views.generic.View
  → django.views.generic.base.TemplateView
    → pytigon_lib.schviews.views.BaseView
      → pytigon_lib.schviews.views.TableView
        → pytigon_lib.schviews.views.FormView
          → pytigon_lib.schviews.views.EditView
          → pytigon_lib.schviews.views.AddView
      → pytigon_lib.schviews.views.TreeView
      → pytigon_lib.schviews.views.ActionView

TableView — The Workhorse

TableView handles list views — fetching records, applying filters, managing pagination, and supporting custom actions.

Key Properties & Methods

class MyTableView(TableView):
    model = MyModel
    template_name = "myapp/mymodel_list.html"
    columns = ['name', 'status', 'created']
    sort = 'name'
    order = 'asc'
    page_size = 25
    search_fields = ['name', 'description']

    def get_queryset(self):
        qs = super().get_queryset()
        if hasattr(self.model, 'filter_by_permissions'):
            qs = self.model.filter_by_permissions(qs, self.request)
        return qs

Query Parameters

The view automatically processes these GET parameters:

Parameter Purpose
offset Pagination offset
sort Sort field name
order Sort direction (asc/desc)
search Search text

POST Handling

POST requests to the list view can carry table actions (select rows → perform batch operation). The table_action class method on the model handles these:

@classmethod
def table_action(cls, list_view, request, data):
    if data.get("action") == "export":
        # Handle export
        return actions.refresh(request)
    return standard_table_action(cls, list_view, request, data, ["copy", "paste"])

FormView / EditView / AddView

These views handle single-record operations:

class AlbumEditView(EditView):
    model = Album

    def get_form_class(self):
        if self.object and hasattr(self.object, 'get_form_class'):
            return self.object.get_form_class(self, self.request, False)
        return super().get_form_class()

    def form_valid(self, form):
        if hasattr(self.object, 'post_form'):
            if not self.object.post_form(self, form, self.request):
                return self.form_invalid(form)
        return super().form_valid(form)

The add_param Parameter

The add view accepts a dynamic parameter via the URL that becomes available as view.kwargs['add_param']. This enables context-dependent new record creation — for example, creating a child record with the parent pre-selected.

ActionView

Custom actions that don't fit CRUD patterns:

class GenerateReportView(ActionView):
    def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        # Process the action
        report_data = generate_report(request.POST)
        return JsonResponse(report_data)

Context Processing

Every view enriches the template context with these variables:

form_edit      — True when rendering an edit form
form_add       — True when rendering an add form
form_delete    — True when rendering a delete form
form_list      — True when rendering a list
form_info      — True when rendering info view
form_grid      — True when rendering grid view
show_form      — True when rendering any form (edit, add, delete, info)
readonly       — True when URL contains "/_"
ro             — "_" if readonly, "" otherwise
default_template    — Base template for this view
default_template2   — Alternative base template

Permissions

Views integrate with Django's permission system. Define permissions per action:

class AlbumView(TableView):
    permission_add = "tables_demo.add_album"
    permission_edit = "tables_demo.change_album"
    permission_delete = "tables_demo.delete_album"

Pytigon checks these automatically before processing requests.

?: View ?: View