View "functions" that are callables?

[Christophe Pettus]

Hi,

I'm surprised I don't know this, but: Can a view "function" in a urlconf be a callable that is not actually a function, such as a class with a __call__ method?

[Abdulfarid Olakunle]

Yes, in Django, a view function in a URLconf can indeed be a callable that is not necessarily a function. It can be a class-based view where the class has a `__call__` method, effectively making it callable. This is a common practice and allows for more flexibility and organization in your code.

On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 20:39 Christophe Pettus <x...@thebuild.com> wrote:

Hi,

I'm surprised I don't know this, but: Can a view "function" in a urlconf be a callable that is not actually a function, such as a class with a __call__ method?

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[Faisal Mahmood]

Yes, in Django, a view function in a URLconf can indeed be a callable that is not necessarily a function. You can use classes with a `__call__` method as views, often referred to as class-based views (CBVs). 

Class-based views offer more flexibility and organization than function-based views in some cases. They allow you to group related functionality together more easily, provide better code reuse through inheritance, and offer built-in methods for common HTTP operations like GET, POST, PUT, etc.

Here's a basic example of a class-based view:

```python

from django.http import HttpResponse

from django.views import View

class MyView(View):

    def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):

        return HttpResponse("This is a GET request")

    def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):

        return HttpResponse("This is a POST request")

```

You can then include this class-based view in your URLconf like this:

```python

from django.urls import path

from .views import MyView

urlpatterns = [

    path('myview/', MyView.as_view(), name='my-view'),

]

```

In this example, `MyView` is a class-based view with `get()` and `post()` methods, which handle GET and POST requests, respectively. When included in the URLconf using `.as_view()`, Django will internally call the `__call__` method of the class to handle the request.

On Thu, May 16, 2024, 12:38 AM Christophe Pettus <x...@thebuild.com> wrote:

Hi,

I'm surprised I don't know this, but: Can a view "function" in a urlconf be a callable that is not actually a function, such as a class with a __call__ method?

[Anthony Flury]

I can't see why not - as far as Python is concerned a callable is a callable.

There is a deep in the weeds way for a caller to determine if a callable is a __call__ method on a class, but I really doubt Django does anything close to that - what would be the benefit.

On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 8:39 PM Christophe Pettus <x...@thebuild.com> wrote:

Hi,

I'm surprised I don't know this, but: Can a view "function" in a urlconf be a callable that is not actually a function, such as a class with a __call__ method?