Why is my else clause not working in Django?-CodePudding

I'm trying to create a search error for my ecommerce website. When a user inputs a search that is not in the database, it should return the search error page. Though it seems my else clause isn't working.

I tried putting the else clause in the search.html page, but it keeps giving me errors and it seems when I try to fix the errors, nothing really happens, it stays the same. I expect the search_error.html page to appear when the user inputs a product name that is not in the database. Though I keep getting for example, when I type "hello," the page appears with "Search results for hello." But it should result the search_error.html page. I also tried currently a else clause in my views.py, but it shows the same thing. I think my else clause isn't working and I don't know why.

My views.py:

def search(request):
    if 'searched' in request.GET:
        searched = request.GET['searched']
        products = Product.objects.filter(title__icontains=searched)
        return render(request, 'epharmacyweb/search.html', {'searched': searched, 'products': products})
    else:
        return render(request, 'epharmacyweb/search_error.html')

def search_error(request):
    return render(request, 'epharmacyweb/search_error.html')

My urls.py under URLPatterns:

path('search/', views.search, name='search'),
path('search_error/', views.search_error, name='search_error'),

My search.html page:

{% if searched %}
            <div >Search Results for {{ searched }}</div>
              <div >
                {% for product in products %}
                    <div >
                        <div >
                          <img  alt="Responsive image" src="{{ product.image.url }}">
                          <div >
                            <p >
                              <a  href="{{ product.get_absolute_url }}">{{ product.title }}</a>
                            </p>
                            <div >
                              <small ></small>
                            </div>
                          </div>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                    {% endfor %}
              </div>
                <br></br>

        {% else %}
            <h1>You haven't searched anything yet...</h1>
        {% endif %}

CodePudding user response：

I think you want to check if products = Product.objects.filter(title__icontains=searched) is returning results instead of checking if "searched" is in the GET arguments.

To check if the database returned results you can you exists()

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.1/ref/models/querysets/#django.db.models.query.QuerySet.exists

CodePudding user response：

Your if is returning true because the term 'searched' is in fact in the request.GET dictionary. That doesn't mean that there is a product in your database with the value request.GET['searched'], which might be "hello" when you type in "hello". request.GET is a dictionary with a key of 'searched' and a value of "hello". You can also use get(), which will either get the value of request['searched'] or return None, so you do not have to check it with an if at all.

Now to check if the database has the value of the search term, you can check the queryset:

def search(request):
    
    # Return the value or None
    searched = request.GET.get('searched')

    products = Product.objects.filter(title__icontains=searched)

    # Check if there are any products with the search term:
    if products:
        return render(request, 'epharmacyweb/search.html', {'searched': searched, 'products': products})
    else:
        return render(request, 'epharmacyweb/search_error.html')