How to save an invoice document with new record creation in the database

[Alexander Joseph]

Hello, I have an app for creating invoices, but I'd like to be able to save a .docx of the invoice when the user creates the invoice (I'm using docx library). I'm very new to django so any direction you can give I appreciate. I'd like to know the proper way to go about doing this.

Right now I have it so that the 'invoice_number' is generated in the model in the save method and the 'created_by' user is assigned to the self.request.user in the view. Please let me know if there is a better way to do this also. Thanks for your help!

Here is my model ...

class Invoice(models.Model):

    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

    their_company = models.ForeignKey(Contact, on_delete=models.CASCADE,blank=True, null=True,)

    invoice_number = models.CharField(max_length=50, default='')

    bill_to = models.CharField(max_length=255, default='')

    in_trash = models.BooleanField(default=False)

    created_by = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL)

    

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):

        

        if not self.id:

            today = datetime.date.today()

            date_str = datetime.datetime.strftime(today, '%y%m%d')

            doc_str = 'IN'

            last_invoice = Invoice.objects.filter(invoice_number__startswith=doc_str).order_by('invoice_number').last()

            if last_invoice:

                last_invoice_num = last_invoice.invoice_number[-2:]

                new_invoice_num = int(last_invoice_num) + 1

                new_invoice_num = "%02d" % new_invoice_num

            else:

                new_invoice_num = '01'

            self.invoice_number = doc_str + date_str + new_invoice_num

            

            

        super(Invoice, self).save(*args, **kwargs)

        

        

    class Meta:

        ordering = ['invoice_number', ]

        

    def __str__(self):

        return self.invoice_number

        

    def get_absolute_url(self):

        return reverse("accounting:invoices:detail", kwargs={"pk": self.pk})

and here is my InvoiceCreateView ...

class InvoiceCreateView(LoginRequiredMixin, CreateView):

    fields = ("their_company", "bill_to")

    model = Invoice

    form = forms.CreateInvoiceForm()

    

    def form_valid(self, form):

        object = form.save(commit=False)

        object.created_by = self.request.user

        object.save()

        

        

        document = Document()

        #use invoice data to create invoice

        

        #save the doc

        document.save('invoice.docx')

        

        return super(InvoiceCreateView, self).form_valid(form)

[Derek]

You may want to initiate  the .docx creation via a trigger in the post_save function; see:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/signals/#post-save

Also, I would move the "utility" code for creating the invoice number into a separate function,
as its easier to test and (possibly) call from other parts of your app.

def create_invoice_number(doc_str):
    """Create a new invoice_number."""
    last_invoice = Invoice.objects.filter(invoice_number__startswith=doc_str).\

        order_by('invoice_number').last()
    if last_invoice:
        last_invoice_num = last_invoice.invoice_number[-2:]
        new_invoice_num = int(last_invoice_num) + 1
        new_invoice_num = "%02d" % new_invoice_num
    else:
        new_invoice_num = '01'

    return new_invoice_num

Then save becomes:

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if not self.id:
            today = datetime.date.today()
            date_str = datetime.datetime.strftime(today, '%y%m%d')
            doc_str = 'IN'

            self.invoice_number = doc_str + date_str + create_invoice_number(doc_str)

[Alexander Joseph]

Thanks for the advice Derek. I actually had just moved the docx creation to the save method after I posted my question yesterday, and you're right, it works much better there

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Best Regards,

Alexander Joseph