List View - Function based Views Django

A List View is a type of Django view used to display multiple instances of a model (i.e., rows from a database table). It is commonly used when you need to present a list of items on a page, for example, listing products on an eCommerce site. While Django provides built-in support for List Views using class-based views, this guide demonstrates how to implement it manually using function-based views.

Django List View - Function Based Views

Illustration of How to create and use List view using an example, consider a project named "geeksforgeeks" having an app named "geeks". 

Refer to the following articles to check how to create a project and an app in Django:

• How to Create a Basic Project using MVT in Django?
• How to Create an App in Django ?

Step 1: Define a Model

Create a simple model in geeks/models.py:

from django.db import models

class GeeksModel(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    description = models.TextField()

    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

Step 2: Apply Migrations

Run the following commands to create the corresponding database table

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

Step 3: Create Sample Data

Use Django's shell to create model instances:

python manage.py shell

Enter following commands in shell :

from geeks.models import GeeksModel

GeeksModel.objects.create(title="title1", description="description1")
GeeksModel.objects.create(title="title2", description="description2")
GeeksModel.objects.create(title="title3", description="description3")

Now we have everything ready for back end.

To verify that instances have been created, exit the shell using exit() command and run the development server using this command:

python manage.py runserver

After running the commad, visit the deelopment url- http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Step 4: Create the List View

In geeks/views.py, define a function-based view to fetch and render the model instances:

from django.shortcuts import render
from .models import GeeksModel

def list_view(request):
    context = {
        "dataset": GeeksModel.objects.all()
    }
    return render(request, "list_view.html", context)

Step 5: Create the Template

In templates/list_view.html, add the following HTML to display the data:

<div class="main">
    {% for data in dataset %}
        <h3>{{ data.title }}</h3>
        <p>{{ data.description }}</p>
        <hr/>
    {% endfor %}
</div>

Run the development server and visit the URL http://127.0.0.1:8000/ to see the list view in action.

Output:

Sorting the List (Descending Order)

You can order the results in reverse (newest first) by modifying the view:

def list_view(request):
    context = {
        "dataset": GeeksModel.objects.all().order_by("-id")
    }
    return render(request, "list_view.html", context)

order_by("-id"): sorts the items in descending order of their ID.

Output:

Filtering the List

You can also filter the data shown in the list view. For example, let’s add a new entry:

Lunch the shell using the below command:

python manage.py shell 

Enter the following commands in shell:

from geeks.models import GeeksModel

GeeksModel.objects.create(title = "Naveen", description = "GFG is Best").save()

To display only items with the word “title” in their title, update the view:

def list_view(request):
    context = {
        "dataset": GeeksModel.objects.filter(title__icontains="title")
    }
    return render(request, "list_view.html", context)

title__icontains="title" filters entries whose title contains the word "title", case-insensitively.

Run the development server and visit the URL http://127.0.0.1:8000/ again to see the filtered output.