---
title: poll application
tags: learning notes, Django, Python
---
# Poll application
* This application will consist of two parts:
- The public site that lets people view polls and vote in them.
- The admin site that lets you add, change and delete polls.

**Table of content**

[toc]
## Writing your first Django app, part 1
### Creating a project
* Creates a Django project directory structure for the given project name in the current directory or optionally in the given directory.

$ django-admin startproject mysite

:::info
Note

You'll need to avoid naming projects after built-in Python or Django component. In particular, it means you should avoid using names like django (which will conflict Django itself) or test (which conflicts with a built-in Python packages).
:::

#### Where should this code live?
* If your background is in plain old PHP (with no use of modern frameworks), you’re probably used to putting code under the Web server’s document root (in a place such as /var/www). With Django, you don’t do that. **It’s not a good idea to put any of this Python code within your Web server’s document root**, because it risks the possibility that people may be able to view your code over the Web. That’s not good for security.<br>
Put your code in some directory outside of the document root, such as /home/mycode.

mysite/
    manage.py
    mysite/
        __init__.py
        settings.py
        urls.py
        wsgi.py

* Let's look at what `startproject` created:
- The outer **mysite/** root directory is just a container for your project. Its name doesn’t matter to Django; you can rename it to anything you like.
- `manage.py`: A command-line utility that lets you interact with this Django project in various ways.
- The inner **mysite/** directory is the actual Python package for your project. **Its name is the Python package name you’ll need to use to import anything inside it (e.g. mysite.urls)**.
- **mysite/_\_init__.py**: An empty file that tells Python that this directory should be considered a Python package.
- mysite/settings.py: Settings/configuration for this Django project
- mysite/urls.py: The URL declarations for this Django project; a “table of contents” of your Django-powered site.
- mysite/wsgi.py: An entry-point for WSGI-compatible web servers to serve your project.

### The development server
Let's verify your Django project works. Change into the outer `mysite/` directory, and starts a lightweight Web server for development.
>> We’ve included this with Django so you can develop things rapidly, without having to deal with configuring a production server – such as Apache – until you’re ready for production.

$ python3 manage.py runserver

Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).

You have unapplied migrations; your app may not work properly until they are applied.
Run 'python manage.py migrate' to apply them.

July 11, 2019 - 15:50:53
Django version 2.2, using settings 'mysite.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

* Now that the server’s running, visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ with your Web browser. You’ll see a “Congratulations!” page, with a rocket taking off. It worked!

### Creating the polls app
**Each application you write in Django consists of a Python package** that follows a certain convention. Django comes with a utility that automatically generates the basic directory structure of an app, so you can focus on writing code rather than creating directories.

:::info
Projects vs. apps

What’s the difference between a project and an app? An app is a Web application that does something – e.g., a Weblog system, a database of public records or a simple poll app. A project is a collection of configuration and apps for a particular website. A project can contain multiple apps. An app can be in multiple projects.
:::

Your apps can live anywhere on your Python path. In this tutorial, we’ll create our poll app right next to your `manage.py` file so that it can be imported as its own top-level module, rather than a submodule of mysite.

To create your app, make sure you are in the same directory as `manage.py`, and creates a Django app directory structure for the given app name in the current directory or optionally in the given directory.

$ python3 manage.py startapp polls

polls/
    __init__.py
    admin.py
    apps.py
    migrations/
        __init__.py
    models.py
    tests.py
    views.py

* This directory structure will house the poll application
### Write your first view

#polls/views.py
from django.http import HttpResponse


def index(request):
    return HttpResponse("Hello, world. You're at the polls index.")

To call the view, we need to map it to a URL - and for this we need a URLconf.

To create a URLconf in the polls directory, create a file called `urls.py`.

#polls/urls.py
from django.urls import path

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.index, name='index'),
]

The next step is to **point the root URLconf at the `polls.urls` module**. In `mysite/urls.py`, add an import for `django.urls.include` and insert an `include()` in the urlpatterns list, so you have:

#mysite/urls.py
from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    path('polls/', include('polls.urls')),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

* The `include()` function allows referencing other URLconfs. Whenever Django encounters `include()`, it chops off whatever part of the URL matched up to that point and sends the remaining string to the included URLconf for further processing.

* The idea behind `include()` is to make it easy to plug-and-play URLs. Since polls are in their own URLconf (polls/urls.py), they can be placed under “/polls/”, or under “/fun_polls/”, or under “/content/polls/”, or any other path root, and the app will still work.
:::warning
When to use include()

You should always use include() when you include other URL patterns. **admin.site.urls** is the only exception to this.
:::

* You now have a wired index view into the URLconf.
## Writing your first Django app, part 2
### Database setup
Now, open up mysite/settings.py. It’s a normal Python module with module-level variables representing Django settings.
:::info
By default, the configuration uses SQLite. If you’re new to databases, or you’re just interested in trying Django, this is the easiest choice. SQLite is included in Python, so you won’t need to install anything else to support your database. When starting your first real project, however, you may want to use a more scalable database like PostgreSQL, to **avoid database-switching headaches down the road**.
:::
* If you wish to use another database, install the appropriate database bindings and change the following keys in the DATABASES 'default' item to match your database connection settings:
- `ENGINE` – Either 'django.db.backends.sqlite3', 'django.db.backends.postgresql', 'django.db.backends.mysql', or 'django.db.backends.oracle'. Other backends are also available.
- `NAME` – The name of your database. If you’re using SQLite, the database will be a file on your computer; in that case, `NAME` should be the full absolute path, including filename, of that file. The default value, `os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3')`, will store the file in your project directory.
- If you are not using SQLite as your database, additional settings such as `USER`, `PASSWORD`, and `HOST` must be added. For more details, see the reference documentation for DATABASES.

* Note the `INSTALLED_APPS` setting at the top of the file. That holds the names of all Django applications that are activated in this Django instance. Apps can be used in multiple projects, and you can package and distribute them for use by others in their projects. By default, `INSTALLED_APPS` contains the following apps, all of which come with Django:
- `django.contrib.admin` – The admin site. You’ll use it shortly.
- `django.contrib.auth` – An authentication system.
- `django.contrib.contenttypes` – A framework for content types.
- `django.contrib.sessions` – A session framework.
- `django.contrib.messages` – A messaging framework.
- `django.contrib.staticfiles` – A framework for managing static files.

* Some of these applications make use of at least one database table, though, so **we need to create the tables in the database before we can use them**. **Updates database schema. Manages both apps with migrations and those without.**

$ python3 manage.py migrate

* The `migrate` command looks at the `INSTALLED_APPS` setting and creates any necessary database tables according to the database settings in your `mysite/settings.py` file and the database migrations shipped with the app (we’ll cover those later). You’ll see a message for each migration it applies. If you’re interested, run the command-line client for your database and type `\dt` (PostgreSQL), `SHOW TABLES;` (MySQL), `.schema` (SQLite), or `SELECT TABLE_NAME FROM USER_TABLES;` (Oracle) to display the tables Django created. The `migrate` command will only run migrations for apps in `INSTALLED_APPS`.

### Creating models
Now we’ll define your models – essentially, your database layout, with additional metadata.

:::success

Philosophy

A model is the single, definitive source of truth about your data. It contains the essential fields and behaviors of the data you’re storing. Django follows the [DRY Principle](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/misc/design-philosophies/#dry). The goal is to define your data model in one place and automatically derive things from it.

This includes the migrations - unlike in Ruby On Rails, for example, migrations are entirely derived from your models file, and are essentially just a history that Django can roll through to update your database schema to match your current models.
:::

* In our simple poll app, we’ll create two models: Question and Choice. Each Choice is associated with a Question.
- A Question has a question and a publication date.
- A Choice has two fields: the text of the choice and a vote tally.
* These concepts are represented by simple Python classes.

#polls/models.py
from django.db import models


class Question(models.Model):
    question_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField('date published')


class Choice(models.Model):
    question = models.ForeignKey(Question, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    choice_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    votes = models.IntegerField(default=0)

* The code is straightforward. Each model is represented by a class that subclasses `django.db.models.Model`. Each model has a number of class variables, each of which represents a database field in the model.

* **Each field is represented by an instance of a Field class** – e.g., `CharField` for character fields and `DateTimeField` for datetimes. This tells Django what type of data each field holds.

* The name of each Field instance (e.g. question_text or pub_date) is the field’s name, in machine-friendly format. **You’ll use this value in your Python code, and your database will use it as the column name**.

* **You can use an optional first positional argument to a Field to designate a human-readable name**. That’s used in a couple of introspective parts of Django, and it doubles as documentation. If this field isn’t provided, Django will use the machine-readable name. In this example, we’ve only defined a human-readable name for Question.pub_date. For all other fields in this model, the field’s machine-readable name will suffice as its human-readable name.

* Some Field classes have required arguments. `CharField`, for example, requires that you give it a max_length. That’s used not only in the database schema, but in validation, as we’ll soon see.

* **A Field can also have various optional arguments**; in this case, we’ve set the default value of votes to 0.

* Finally, **note a relationship is defined, using `ForeignKey`. That tells Django each `Choice` is related to a single `Question`. Django supports all the common database relationships: many-to-one, many-to-many, and one-to-one.**

### Activating models
* **That small bit of model code gives Django a lot of information. With it, Django is able to:**
- **Create a database schema (CREATE TABLE statements) for this app.**
- **Create a Python database-access API for accessing Question and Choice objects.**
:::success
Philosophy

Django apps are “pluggable”: You can use an app in multiple projects, and you can distribute apps, because they don’t have to be tied to a given Django installation.
:::
* **To include the app in our project, we need to add a reference to its configuration class in the `INSTALLED_APPS` setting**. The `PollsConfig` class is in the `polls/apps.py` file, so its dotted path is `'polls.apps.PollsConfig'`. Edit the mysite/settings.py file and add that dotted path to the `INSTALLED_APPS` setting. It’ll look like this:

#mysite/setting.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'polls.apps.PollsConfig',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]

* Now Django knows to include the polls app. Let’s run another command, **creates new migration(s) for apps**:

$ python3 manage.py makemigrations polls

* **By running `makemigrations`, you’re telling Django that you’ve made some changes to your models (in this case, you’ve made new ones) and that you’d like the changes to be stored as a migration.**

* **Migrations are how Django stores changes to your models (and thus your database schema) - they’re just files on disk.** You can read the migration for your new model if you like; it’s the file `polls/migrations/0001_initial.py`. Don’t worry, you’re not expected to read them every time Django makes one, but they’re designed to be human-editable in case you want to manually tweak how Django changes things.

* There’s a command that will run the migrations for you and manage your database schema automatically - that’s called `migrate`, and we’ll come to it in a moment - but first, let’s see what SQL that migration would run. **Prints the SQL statements for the named migration.** The `sqlmigrate` command takes migration names and returns their SQL:

$ python3 manage.py sqlmigrate polls 0001


-- you should see something similar to the following
-- (we’ve reformatted it for readability)

BEGIN;
--
-- Create model Choice
--
CREATE TABLE "polls_choice" (
    "id" serial NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    "choice_text" varchar(200) NOT NULL,
    "votes" integer NOT NULL
);
--
-- Create model Question
--
CREATE TABLE "polls_question" (
    "id" serial NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    "question_text" varchar(200) NOT NULL,
    "pub_date" timestamp with time zone NOT NULL
);
--
-- Add field question to choice
--
ALTER TABLE "polls_choice" ADD COLUMN "question_id" integer NOT NULL;
ALTER TABLE "polls_choice" ALTER COLUMN "question_id" DROP DEFAULT;
CREATE INDEX "polls_choice_7aa0f6ee" ON "polls_choice" ("question_id");
ALTER TABLE "polls_choice"
  ADD CONSTRAINT "polls_choice_question_id_246c99a640fbbd72_fk_polls_question_id"
    FOREIGN KEY ("question_id")
    REFERENCES "polls_question" ("id")
    DEFERRABLE INITIALLY DEFERRED;

COMMIT;

* Note the following:
- The exact output will vary depending on the database you are using. The example above is generated for PostgreSQL.
- Table names are automatically generated by combining the name of the app (polls) and the lowercase name of the model – question and choice. (You can override this behavior.)
- **Primary keys (IDs) are added automatically.** (You can override this, too.)
- By convention, Django appends "_id" to the foreign key field name. (Yes, you can override this, as well.)
- The foreign key relationship is made explicit by a FOREIGN KEY constraint. Don’t worry about the DEFERRABLE parts; that’s just telling PostgreSQL to not enforce the foreign key until the end of the transaction.
- **It’s tailored to the database you’re using, so database-specific field types such as auto_increment (MySQL), serial (PostgreSQL), or integer primary key autoincrement (SQLite) are handled for you automatically. Same goes for the quoting of field names – e.g., using double quotes or single quotes.**
- **The sqlmigrate command doesn’t actually run the migration on your database - it just prints it to the screen so that you can see what SQL Django thinks is required.** It’s useful for checking what Django is going to do or if you have database administrators who require SQL scripts for changes.

* Now, run `migrate` again to create those model tables in your database:

$ python manage.py migrate
Operations to perform:
  Apply all migrations: admin, auth, contenttypes, polls, sessions
Running migrations:
  Rendering model states... DONE
  Applying polls.0001_initial... OK

* The `migrate` command takes all the migrations that haven’t been applied **(Django tracks which ones are applied using a special table in your database called django_migrations)** and runs them against your database - essentially, synchronizing the changes you made to your models with the schema in the database.

* Migrations are very powerful and let you change your models over time, as you develop your project, without the need to delete your database or tables and make new ones - **it specializes in upgrading your database live, without losing data.** We’ll cover them in more depth in a later part of the tutorial, but for now, remember the three-step guide to making model changes:
- Change your models (in `models.py`).
- Run `python manage.py makemigrations` to create migrations for those changes
- Run `python manage.py migrate` to apply those changes to the database.
* The reason that there are separate commands to make and apply migrations is because you’ll commit migrations to your version control system and ship them with your app; they not only make your development easier, they’re also usable by other developers and in production.

### Playing with the API
Now, let’s hop into the interactive Python shell and play around with the free API Django gives you. To invoke the Python shell, use this command:

$ python3 manage.py shell

We’re using this instead of simply typing “python”, **because manage.py sets the `DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE` environment variable, which gives Django the Python import path to your `mysite/settings.py` file.**

>>> from polls.models import Choice, Question  # Import the model classes we just wrote.

# No questions are in the system yet.
>>> Question.objects.all()
<QuerySet []>

# Create a new Question.
# Support for time zones is enabled in the default settings file, so
# Django expects a datetime with tzinfo for pub_date. Use timezone.now()
# instead of datetime.datetime.now() and it will do the right thing.
>>> from django.utils import timezone
>>> q = Question(question_text="What's new?", pub_date=timezone.now())

# Save the object into the database. You have to call save() explicitly.
>>> q.save()

# Now it has an ID.
>>> q.id
1

# Access model field values via Python attributes.
>>> q.question_text
"What's new?"
>>> q.pub_date
datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 26, 13, 0, 0, 775217, tzinfo=<UTC>)

# Change values by changing the attributes, then calling save().
>>> q.question_text = "What's up?"
>>> q.save()

# objects.all() displays all the questions in the database.
>>> Question.objects.all()
<QuerySet [<Question: Question object (1)>]>

* Wait a minute. `<Question: Question object (1)>` isn’t a helpful representation of this object. Let’s fix that by editing the `Question` model (in the `polls/models.py` file) and adding a `__str__()` method to both `Question` and `Choice`:

#polls/models.py
from django.db import models

class Question(models.Model):
    # ...
    def __str__(self):
        return self.question_text

class Choice(models.Model):
    # ...
    def __str__(self):
        return self.choice_text

* It’s important to add `__str__()` methods to your models, not only for your own convenience when dealing with the interactive prompt, but also because objects’ representations are used throughout Django’s automatically-generated admin.
* Note these are normal Python methods. Let’s add a custom method, just for demonstration:

#polls/models.py
import datetime

from django.db import models
from django.utils import timezone


class Question(models.Model):
    # ...
    def was_published_recently(self):
        return self.pub_date >= timezone.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=1)

* Note the addition of import `datetime` and from `django.utils` import `timezone`, to reference Python’s standard `datetime` module and Django’s time-zone-related utilities in `django.utils.timezone`, respectively. If you aren’t familiar with time zone handling in Python, you can learn more in the [time zone support docs](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/topics/i18n/timezones/).

Save these changes and start a new Python interactive shell by running python `manage.py` shell again:

>>> from polls.models import Choice, Question

# Make sure our __str__() addition worked.
>>> Question.objects.all()
<QuerySet [<Question: What's up?>]>

# Django provides a rich database lookup API that's entirely driven by
# keyword arguments.
>>> Question.objects.filter(id=1)
<QuerySet [<Question: What's up?>]>
>>> Question.objects.filter(question_text__startswith='What')
<QuerySet [<Question: What's up?>]>

# Get the question that was published this year.
>>> from django.utils import timezone
>>> current_year = timezone.now().year
>>> Question.objects.get(pub_date__year=current_year)
<Question: What's up?>

# Request an ID that doesn't exist, this will raise an exception.
>>> Question.objects.get(id=2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
DoesNotExist: Question matching query does not exist.

# Lookup by a primary key is the most common case, so Django provides a
# shortcut for primary-key exact lookups.
# The following is identical to Question.objects.get(id=1).
>>> Question.objects.get(pk=1)
<Question: What's up?>

# Make sure our custom method worked.
>>> q = Question.objects.get(pk=1)
>>> q.was_published_recently()
True

# Give the Question a couple of Choices. The create call constructs a new
# Choice object, does the INSERT statement, adds the choice to the set
# of available choices and returns the new Choice object. Django creates
# a set to hold the "other side" of a ForeignKey relation
# (e.g. a question's choice) which can be accessed via the API.
>>> q = Question.objects.get(pk=1)

# Display any choices from the related object set -- none so far.
>>> q.choice_set.all()
<QuerySet []>

# Create three choices.
>>> q.choice_set.create(choice_text='Not much', votes=0)
<Choice: Not much>
>>> q.choice_set.create(choice_text='The sky', votes=0)
<Choice: The sky>
>>> c = q.choice_set.create(choice_text='Just hacking again', votes=0)

# Choice objects have API access to their related Question objects.
>>> c.question
<Question: What's up?>

# And vice versa: Question objects get access to Choice objects.
>>> q.choice_set.all()
<QuerySet [<Choice: Not much>, <Choice: The sky>, <Choice: Just hacking again>]>
>>> q.choice_set.count()
3

# The API automatically follows relationships as far as you need.
# Use double underscores to separate relationships.
# This works as many levels deep as you want; there's no limit.
# Find all Choices for any question whose pub_date is in this year
# (reusing the 'current_year' variable we created above).
>>> Choice.objects.filter(question__pub_date__year=current_year)
<QuerySet [<Choice: Not much>, <Choice: The sky>, <Choice: Just hacking again>]>

# Let's delete one of the choices. Use delete() for that.
>>> c = q.choice_set.filter(choice_text__startswith='Just hacking')
>>> c.delete()

* For more information on model relations, see `Accessing related objects`. For more on how to use double underscores to perform field lookups via the API, see `Field lookups`. For full details on the database API, see our `Database API reference`.

### Introducing the Django Admin
:::success
**Philosophy**

Generating admin sites for your staff or clients to add, change, and delete content is tedious work that doesn’t require much creativity. For that reason, Django entirely automates creation of admin interfaces for models.

Django was written in a newsroom environment, with a very clear separation between “content publishers” and the “public” site. Site managers use the system to add news stories, events, sports scores, etc., and that content is displayed on the public site. Django solves the problem of creating a unified interface for site administrators to edit content.

The admin isn’t intended to be used by site visitors. It’s for site managers.
:::
#### Creating an admin user
First we’ll need to create a user who can login to the admin site. Run the following command:

$ python3 manage.py createsuperuser

#### Start the development server
The Django admin site is activated by default. Let’s start the development server and explore it.

If the server is not running start it like so:

$ python3 manage.py runserver

Now, open a Web browser and go to “/admin/” on your local domain – e.g., http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/.

#### Enter the admin site
Now, try logging in with the superuser account you created in the previous step.

You should see a few types of editable content: groups and users. They are provided by `django.contrib.auth`, the authentication framework shipped by Django.

#### Make the poll app modifiable in the admin
But where’s our poll app? It’s not displayed on the admin index page.

Just one thing to do: we need to tell the admin that `Question` objects have an admin interface. To do this, open the `polls/admin.py` file, and edit it to look like this:

#polls/admin.py
from django.contrib import admin

from .models import Question

admin.site.register(Question)

#### Explore the free admin functionality
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/intro/tutorial02/#explore-the-free-admin-functionality
When you’re comfortable with the models API and have familiarized yourself with the admin site, read part 3 of this tutorial to learn about how to add more views to our polls app.

## Writing your first Django app, part 3
### Overview
**A view is a “type” of Web page in your Django application that generally serves a specific function and has a specific template.** For example, in a blog application, you might have the following views:

* Blog homepage – displays the latest few entries.
* Entry “detail” page – permalink page for a single entry.
* Year-based archive page – displays all months with entries in the given year.
* Month-based archive page – displays all days with entries in the given month.
* Day-based archive page – displays all entries in the given day.
* Comment action – handles posting comments to a given entry.

In our poll application, we’ll have the following four views:

* Question “index” page – displays the latest few questions.
* Question “detail” page – displays a question text, with no results but with a form to vote.
* Question “results” page – displays results for a particular question.
* Vote action – handles voting for a particular choice in a particular question.

In Django, web pages and other content are delivered by views. **Each view is represented by a simple Python function (or method, in the case of class-based views)**. Django will choose a view by examining the URL that’s requested (to be precise, the **part of the URL after the domain name**)

Now in your time on the web you may have come across such beauties as “ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?sid=&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&gid=A6CD4967199A42D9B65B1B”. You will be pleased to know that Django allows us much more elegant *URL patterns* than that.

A URL pattern is simply the general form of a URL - for example: **/newsarchive/<year>/<month>/**.

**To get from a URL to a view, Django uses what are known as ‘URLconfs’. A URLconf maps URL patterns to views.**

This tutorial provides basic instruction in the use of URLconfs, and you can refer to [URL dispatcher](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/topics/http/urls/) for more information.

### Writing more views
Now let’s add a few more views to `polls/views.py`. These views are slightly different, because they take an argument:

#polls/views.py
def detail(request, question_id):
    return HttpResponse("You're looking at question %s." % question_id)

def results(request, question_id):
    response = "You're looking at the results of question %s."
    return HttpResponse(response % question_id)

def vote(request, question_id):
    return HttpResponse("You're voting on question %s." % question_id)

Wire(提供) these new views into the `polls.urls` module by adding the following `path()` calls:

#polls/urls.py
from django.urls import path

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    # ex: /polls/
    path('', views.index, name='index'),
    # ex: /polls/5/
    path('<int:question_id>/', views.detail, name='detail'),
    # ex: /polls/5/results/
    path('<int:question_id>/results/', views.results, name='results'),
    # ex: /polls/5/vote/
    path('<int:question_id>/vote/', views.vote, name='vote'),
]

Take a look in your browser, at `/polls/34/`. It’ll run the `detail()` method and display whatever ID you provide in the URL. Try `/polls/34/results/` and `/polls/34/vote/` too – these will display the placeholder results and voting pages.

**When somebody requests a page from your website – say, `/polls/34/`, Django will load the `mysite.urls` Python module because it’s pointed to by the `ROOT_URLCONF` setting. It finds the variable named `urlpatterns` and traverses the patterns in order. After finding the match at `polls/`, it strips off the matching text (`polls/`) and sends the remaining text – `34/` – to the `polls.urls` URLconf for further processing. There it matches `<int:question_id>/`, resulting in a call to the `detail()` view like so:**

detail(request=<HttpRequest object>, question_id=34)

The `question_id=34` part comes from `<int:question_id>`. Using angle brackets “captures” part of the URL and sends it as a keyword argument to the view function. The `:question_id>` part of the string **defines the name** that will be used to identify the matched pattern, and the `<int:` part is a converter that **determines what patterns** should match this part of the URL path.

There’s no need to add URL cruft(爛設計) such as .html – unless you want to, in which case you can do something like this:

path('polls/latest.html', views.index),

But, don’t do that. It’s silly.🤣

### Write views that actually do something
**Each view is responsible for doing one of two things: returning an `HttpResponse` object containing the content for the requested page, or raising an exception such as `Http404`**. The rest is up to you.

Your view can read records from a database, or not. It can use a template system such as Django’s – or a third-party Python template system – or not. It can generate a PDF file, output XML, create a ZIP file on the fly, anything you want, using whatever Python libraries you want.

**All Django wants is that `HttpResponse`. Or an exception.**

Because it’s convenient, let’s use Django’s own database API, which we covered in Tutorial 2. Here’s one stab(意圖) at a new `index()` view, which displays the latest 5 poll questions in the system, separated by commas, according to publication date:

#polls/views.py
from django.http import HttpResponse

from .models import Question


def index(request):
    latest_question_list = Question.objects.order_by('-pub_date')[:5]
    output = ', '.join([q.question_text for q in latest_question_list])
    return HttpResponse(output)

# Leave the rest of the views (detail, results, vote) unchanged

* There’s a problem here, though: the page’s design is hard-coded(形容要更動的話一定要進來程式修改資料或參數) in the view. If you want to change the way the page looks, you’ll have to edit this Python code. So let’s use Django’s template system to separate the design from Python by creating a template that the view can use.

First, create a directory called `templates` in your polls directory. Django will look for templates in there.

Your project’s `TEMPLATES` setting describes how Django will load and render templates. The default settings file configures a `DjangoTemplates` backend whose `APP_DIRS` option is set to `True`. By convention `DjangoTemplates` looks for a “templates” subdirectory in each of the `INSTALLED_APPS`.


Within the `templates` directory you have just created, create another directory called `polls`, and within that create a file called `index.html`. In other words, your template should be at `polls/templates/polls/index.html`. Because of how the `app_directories` template loader works as described above, you can refer to this template within Django simply as `polls/index.html.`

:::warning
**Template namespacing**

Now we might be able to get away with putting our templates directly in `polls/templates` (rather than creating another `polls` subdirectory), but it would actually be a bad idea. **Django will choose the first template it finds whose name matches, and if you had a template with the same name in a different application, Django would be unable to distinguish between them.** We need to be able to point Django at the right one, and the easiest way to ensure this is by namespacing them. That is, by putting those templates inside another directory named for the application itself.
:::

Put the following code in that template:

{% if latest_question_list %}
    <ul>
    {% for question in latest_question_list %}
        <li><a href="/polls/{{ question.id }}/">{{ question.question_text }}</a></li>
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>
{% else %}
    <p>No polls are available.</p>
{% endif %}

Now let’s update our `index` view in `polls/views.py` to use the template:

#polls/views.py
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template import loader

from .models import Question


def index(request):
    latest_question_list = Question.objects.order_by('-pub_date')[:5]
    template = loader.get_template('polls/index.html')
    context = {
        'latest_question_list': latest_question_list,
    }
    return HttpResponse(template.render(context, request))

* That code loads the template called `polls/index.html` and passes it a context. The context is a dictionary mapping template variable names to Python objects.

Load the page by pointing your browser at “/polls/”, and you should see a bulleted-list containing the “What’s up” question from Tutorial 2. The link points to the question’s detail page.

A shortcut: `render()`
* It’s a very common idiom to load a template, fill a context and return an HttpResponse object with the result of the rendered template. Django provides a shortcut. Here’s the full index() view, rewritten:

#polls/views.py
from django.shortcuts import render

from .models import Question


def index(request):
    latest_question_list = Question.objects.order_by('-pub_date')[:5]
    context = {'latest_question_list': latest_question_list}
    return render(request, 'polls/index.html', context)

* Note that once we’ve done this in all these views, we no longer need to import loader and `HttpResponse` (you’ll want to keep `HttpResponse` if you still have the stub methods for `detail`, `results`, and `vote`).

* The `render()` function takes the **request object** as its first argument, a **template name** as its second argument and a dictionary as its optional third argument. It returns an `HttpResponse` object of the given template rendered with the given context.

### Raising a 404 error
Now, let’s tackle the question detail view – the page that displays the question text for a given poll. Here’s the view:

#polls/views.py
from django.http import Http404
from django.shortcuts import render

from .models import Question
# ...
def detail(request, question_id):
    try:
        question = Question.objects.get(pk=question_id)
    except Question.DoesNotExist:
        raise Http404("Question does not exist")
    return render(request, 'polls/detail.html', {'question': question})

* The new concept here: The view raises the `Http404` exception if a question with the requested ID doesn’t exist.

A shortcut: `get_object_or_404()`
It’s a very common idiom to use `get()` and raise `Http404` if the object doesn’t exist. Django provides a shortcut. Here’s the `detail()` view, rewritten:
`polls/views.py`

#polls/views.py
from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404, render

from .models import Question
# ...
def detail(request, question_id):
    question = get_object_or_404(Question, pk=question_id)
    return render(request, 'polls/detail.html', {'question': question})

The `get_object_or_404()` function takes a Django model as its first argument and an arbitrary number of keyword arguments, which it passes to the `get()` function of the model’s manager. It raises `Http404` if the object doesn’t exist.

:::info
**Philosophy**

Why do we use a helper function `get_object_or_404()` instead of automatically catching the `ObjectDoesNotExist` exceptions at a higher level, or having the model API raise `Http404` instead of `ObjectDoesNotExist`?

**Because that would couple(結合) the model layer to the view layer.** One of the foremost(最重要的) design goals of Django is to **maintain loose coupling**. Some controlled coupling is introduced in the `django.shortcuts` module.
:::

### Use the template system
Back to the `detail()` view for our poll application. Given the context variable `question`, here’s what the `polls/detail.html` template might look like:

#polls/templates/polls/detail.html
<h1>{{ question.question_text }}</h1>
<ul>
{% for choice in question.choice_set.all %}
    <li>{{ choice.choice_text }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>

**The template system uses dot-lookup syntax to access variable attributes**. In the example of `{{ question.question_text }}`, first Django does a dictionary lookup on the object `question`. Failing that, it tries an **attribute lookup** – which works, in this case. If attribute lookup had failed, it would’ve tried a **list-index lookup**.

Method-calling happens in the `{% for %}` loop: `question.choice_set.all` is interpreted as the Python code `question.choice_set.all()`, which returns an iterable of `Choice` objects and is suitable for use in the `{% for %}` tag.

### Removing hardcoded URLs in templates
Remember, when we wrote the link to a question in the `polls/index.html` template, the link was partially hardcoded like this:

<li><a href="/polls/{{ question.id }}/">{{ question.question_text }}</a></li>

The problem with this hardcoded, tightly-coupled approach is that it becomes challenging to change URLs on projects with a lot of templates. However, **since you defined the name argument in the `path()` functions in the `polls.urls` module, you can remove a reliance on specific URL paths defined in your url configurations by using the `{% url %}` template tag:**

<li><a href="{% url 'detail' question.id %}">{{ question.question_text }}</a></li>

### Namespacing URL names
The tutorial project has just one app, `polls`. In real Django projects, there might be five, ten, twenty apps or more. How does Django differentiate the URL names between them? For example, the `polls` app has a `detail` view, and so might an app on the same project that is for a blog. How does one make it so that Django knows which app view to create for a url when using the `{% url %}` template tag?

**The answer is to add namespaces to your URLconf.** In the `polls/urls.py` file, go ahead and add an `app_name` to set the application namespace:

#polls/urls.py
from django.urls import path

from . import views

app_name = 'polls'
urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.index, name='index'),
    path('<int:question_id>/', views.detail, name='detail'),
    path('<int:question_id>/results/', views.results, name='results'),
    path('<int:question_id>/vote/', views.vote, name='vote'),
]

Now change your `polls/index.html` template to point at the namespaced detail view:

<li><a href="{% url 'polls:detail' question.id %}">{{ question.question_text }}</a></li>

## Writing your first Django app, part 4
### Writes a simple form
Let’s update our poll detail template (“polls/detail.html”) from the last tutorial, so that the template contains an HTML `<form>` element:

#polls/templates/polls/detail.py
<h1>{{ question.question_text }}</h1>

{% if error_message %}<p><strong>{{ error_message }}</strong></p>{% endif %}

<form action="{% url 'polls:vote' question.id %}" method="post">
{% csrf_token %}
{% for choice in question.choice_set.all %}
    <input type="radio" name="choice" id="choice{{ forloop.counter }}" value="{{ choice.id }}">
    <label for="choice{{ forloop.counter }}">{{ choice.choice_text }}</label><br>
{% endfor %}
<input type="submit" value="Vote">
</form>

* A quick rundown:
- The above template displays a radio button for each question choice. The `value` of each radio button is the associated question choice’s ID. The `name` of each radio button is "choice". That means, when somebody selects one of the radio buttons and submits the form, it’ll send the POST data **choice=#** where # is the ID of the selected choice. This is the basic concept of HTML forms.
- We set the form’s `action` to `{% url 'polls:vote' question.id %}`, and we set **method="post"**. Using method="post" (as opposed to **method="get"**) is very important, because the act of submitting this form will alter data server-side. **Whenever you create a form that alters data server-side, use method="post"**. This tip isn’t specific to Django; it’s just good Web development practice.
- `forloop.counter` indicates how many times the `for` tag has gone through its loop
- Since we’re creating a POST form (which can have the effect of modifying data), we need to worry about **Cross Site Request Forgeries([CSRF, 跨站請求偽造](https://blog.techbridge.cc/2017/02/25/csrf-introduction/))**. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry too hard, because Django comes with a very easy-to-use system for protecting against it. In short, all POST forms that are targeted at internal URLs should use the `{% csrf_token %}` template tag.

Now, let’s create a Django view that handles the submitted data and does something with it. Remember, in Tutorial 3, we created a URLconf for the polls application that includes this line:

#polls/urls.py
path('<int:question_id>/vote/', views.vote, name='vote'),

We also created a dummy implementation of the `vote()` function. Let’s create a real version. Add the following to `polls/views.py`:

#polls/views.py
from django.http import HttpResponse, HttpResponseRedirect
from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404, render
from django.urls import reverse

from .models import Choice, Question
# ...
def vote(request, question_id):
    question = get_object_or_404(Question, pk=question_id)
    try:
        selected_choice = question.choice_set.get(pk=request.POST['choice'])
    except (KeyError, Choice.DoesNotExist):
        # Redisplay the question voting form.
        return render(request, 'polls/detail.html', {
            'question': question,
            'error_message': "You didn't select a choice.",
        })
    else:
        selected_choice.votes += 1
        selected_choice.save()
        # Always return an HttpResponseRedirect after successfully dealing
        # with POST data. This prevents data from being posted twice if a
        # user hits the Back button.
        return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('polls:results', args=(question.id,)))

* This code includes a few things we haven’t covered yet in this tutorial:
- **`request.POST` is a dictionary-like object that lets you access submitted data by key name.** In this case, `request.POST['choice']` returns the ID of the selected choice, as a string. `request.POST` values are always strings. <br>
Note that Django also provides `request.GET` for accessing GET data in the same way – but we’re explicitly using `request.POST` in our code, to ensure that data is only altered via a POST call
- `request.POST['choice']` will raise `KeyError` if `choice` wasn’t provided in POST data. The above code checks for `KeyError` and redisplays the question form with an error message if `choice` isn’t given.
- After incrementing the choice count, the code returns an `HttpResponseRedirect` rather than a normal `HttpResponse`. **`HttpResponseRedirect` takes a single argument: the URL to which the user will be redirected** (see the following point for how we construct the URL in this case).
- We are using the `reverse()` function in the `HttpResponseRedirect` constructor in this example. This function helps avoid having to hardcode a URL in the view function. It is given the name of the view that we want to pass control to and the variable portion of the URL pattern that points to that view. In this case, using the URLconf we set up in Tutorial 3, this `reverse()` call will return a string like `'/polls/3/results/'`, where the 3 is the value of `question.id`. This redirected URL will then call the `'results'` view to display the final page.

* After somebody votes in a question, the `vote()` view redirects to the results page for the question. Let’s write that view:

#polls/views.py
from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404, render


def results(request, question_id):
    question = get_object_or_404(Question, pk=question_id)
    return render(request, 'polls/results.html', {'question': question})

This is almost exactly the same as the `detail()` view from Tutorial 3. The only difference is the template name. We’ll fix this redundancy later.

Now, create a `polls/results.html` template:

#polls/templates/polls/results.html
<h1>{{ question.question_text }}</h1>

<ul>
{% for choice in question.choice_set.all %}
    <li>{{ choice.choice_text }} -- {{ choice.votes }} vote{{ choice.votes|pluralize }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>

<a href="{% url 'polls:detail' question.id %}">Vote again?</a>

Now, go to `/polls/1/` in your browser and vote in the question. You should see a results page that gets updated each time you vote. If you submit the form without having chosen a choice, you should see the error message.

:::info
**Note**

The code for our `vote()` view does have a small problem. It first gets the `selected_choice` object from the database, then computes the new value of `votes`, and then saves it back to the database. If two users of your website try to vote at exactly the same time, this might go wrong: The same value, let’s say 42, will be retrieved for `votes`. Then, for both users the new value of 43 is computed and saved, but 44 would be the expected value.

This is called a **race condition**. If you are interested, you can read [Avoiding race conditions using F()](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/models/expressions/#avoiding-race-conditions-using-f) to learn how you can solve this issue.
:::

### Use generic views: Less code is better
The `detail()` and `results()` views are very simple – and, as mentioned above, redundant. The `index()` view, which displays a list of polls, is similar.

**These views represent a common case of basic Web development: getting data from the database according to a parameter passed in the URL, loading a template and returning the rendered template.** Because this is so common, Django provides a shortcut, called the **“generic views”** system.

Generic views **abstract common patterns to the point** where you don’t even need to write Python code to write an app.

Let’s convert our poll app to use the generic views system, so we can delete a bunch of our own code. We’ll just have to take a few steps to make the conversion. We will:
1. **Convert the URLconf**
2. **Delete some of the old, unneeded views**
3. **Introduce new views based on Django's generic views**

:::success
Why the code-shuffle?

Generally, when writing a Django app, you’ll evaluate whether generic views are a good fit for your problem, and you’ll use them from the beginning, rather than refactoring your code halfway through. But this tutorial intentionally has focused on writing the views “the hard way” until now, to focus on core concepts.

You should know basic math before you start using a calculator.
:::
#### Amend URLconf
First, open the `polls/urls.py` URLconf and change it like so:

#polls/urls.py
from django.urls import path

from . import views

app_name = 'polls'
urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.IndexView.as_view(), name='index'),
    path('<int:pk>/', views.DetailView.as_view(), name='detail'),
    path('<int:pk>/results/', views.ResultsView.as_view(), name='results'),
    path('<int:question_id>/vote/', views.vote, name='vote'),
]

Note that the name of the matched pattern in the path strings of the second and third patterns has changed from `<question_id>` to `<pk>`.

#### Amend views
Next, we’re going to remove our old `index`, `detail`, and `results` views and use Django’s generic views instead. To do so, open the `polls/views.py` file and change it like so:

#polls/views.py
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect
from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404, render
from django.urls import reverse
from django.views import generic

from .models import Choice, Question


class IndexView(generic.ListView):
    template_name = 'polls/index.html'
    context_object_name = 'latest_question_list'

    def get_queryset(self):
        """Return the last five published questions."""
        return Question.objects.order_by('-pub_date')[:5]


class DetailView(generic.DetailView):
    model = Question
    template_name = 'polls/detail.html'


class ResultsView(generic.DetailView):
    model = Question
    template_name = 'polls/results.html'


def vote(request, question_id):
    ... # same as above, no changes needed.

* We’re using two generic views here: `ListView` and `DetailView`. Respectively, those two views abstract the concepts of **“display a list of objects”** and **“display a detail page for a particular type of object.”**
- Each generic view needs to know what model it will be acting upon. This is provided using the `model` attribute.
- The `DetailView` generic view expects the primary key value captured from the URL to be called **"pk"**, so we’ve changed `question_id` to pk for the generic views.
* By default, the `DetailView` generic view uses a template called `<app name>/<model name>_detail.html`. In our case, it would use the template "polls/question_detail.html". The `template_name` attribute is used to tell Django to use a specific template name instead of the autogenerated default template name. We also specify the `template_name` for the results list view – this ensures that the results view and the detail view have a different appearance when rendered, even though they’re both a `DetailView` behind the scenes.
* Similarly, the `ListView` generic view uses a default template called `<app name>/<model name>_list.html`; we use `template_name` to tell `ListView` to use our existing "polls/index.html" template.
* In previous parts of the tutorial, the templates have been provided with a context that contains the `question` and `latest_question_list` context variables. **For `DetailView` the `question` variable is provided automatically – since we’re using a Django model (Question)**, Django is able to determine an appropriate name for the context variable. However, for `ListView`, the automatically generated context variable is `question_list`. To override this we provide the `context_object_name` attribute, specifying that we want to use `latest_question_list` instead. As an alternative approach, you could change your templates to match the new default context variables – but it’s a lot easier to just tell Django to use the variable you want.
## Writing your first Django app, part 5
### Introducing automated testing
#### What are automated tests?
Tests are simple routines that check the operation of your code.

Testing operates at different levels. Some tests might apply to a tiny detail (does a particular model method return values as expected?) while others examine the overall operation of the software (does a sequence of user inputs on the site produce the desired result?). That’s no different from the kind of testing you did earlier in Tutorial 2, using the `shell` to examine the behavior of a method, or running the application and entering data to check how it behaves.

What’s different in automated tests is that the testing work is done for you by the system. You create a set of tests once, and then as you make changes to your app, you can check that your code still works as you originally intended, without having to perform time consuming manual testing.

#### Why you neet to create tests?
So why create tests? and why now?

You may feel that you have quite enough on your plate just learning Python/Django, and having yet another thing to learn and do may seem overwhelming and perhaps unnecessary. After all, our polls application is working quite happily now; going through the trouble of creating automated tests is not going to make it work any better. If creating the polls application is the last bit of Django programming you will ever do, then true, you don’t need to know how to create automated tests. But, if that’s not the case, now is an excellent time to learn.

##### Tests will save you time
Up to a certain point, ‘checking that it seems to work’ will be a satisfactory test. In a more sophisticated application, you might have dozens of complex interactions between components.

A change in any of those components could have unexpected consequences on the application’s behavior. Checking that it still ‘seems to work’ could mean running through your code’s functionality with twenty different variations of your test data just to make sure you haven’t broken something - not a good use of your time.

That’s especially true when automated tests could do this for you in seconds. **If something’s gone wrong, tests will also assist in identifying the code that’s causing the unexpected behavior.**

Sometimes it may seem a chore(例行事項) to tear yourself away from your productive, creative programming work to face the unglamorous and unexciting business of writing tests, particularly when you know your code is working properly.

However, the task of writing tests is a lot more fulfilling than spending hours testing your application manually or trying to identify the cause of a newly-introduced problem.

##### Tests don't just identify problems, they prevent them

It’s a mistake to think of tests merely as a negative aspect of development.

Without tests, the purpose or intended behavior of an application might be rather opaque(無法看透). Even when it’s your own code, you will sometimes find yourself poking around(四處找尋) in it trying to find out what exactly it’s doing.

**Tests change that; they light up your code from the inside, and when something goes wrong, they focus light on the part that has gone wrong - even if you hadn’t even realized it had gone wrong.**

##### Tests make your code more attractive
You might have created a brilliant piece of software, but you will find that many other developers will simply refuse to look at it because it lacks tests; without tests, they won’t trust it. Jacob Kaplan-Moss, one of Django’s original developers, says “Code without tests is broken by design.”

That other developers want to see tests in your software before they take it seriously is yet another reason for you to start writing tests.

##### Tests help teams work together
The previous points are written from the point of view of a single developer maintaining an application. Complex applications will be maintained by teams. Tests guarantee that colleagues don’t inadvertently(不經意間) break your code (and that you don’t break theirs without knowing). If you want to make a living as a Django programmer, you must be good at writing tests!

### Basic testing strategies
There many ways to approach writing tests.

Some programmers follow a discipline called [“test-driven development, TDD”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development); they actually write their tests before they write their code. This might seem counter-intuitive, but in fact it’s similar to what most people will often do anyway: they describe a problem, then create some code to solve it. Test-driven development simply formalizes(形式化) the problem in a Python test case.

More often, a newcomer to testing will create some code and later decide that it should have some tests. **Perhaps it would have been better to write some tests earlier**, but it’s never too late to get started.

**Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out where to get started with writing tests. If you have written several thousand lines of Python, choosing something to test might not be easy. In such a case, it’s fruitful(高效率) to write your first test the next time you make a change, either when you add a new feature or fix a bug.**

### Writing our first test
#### We identify a bug
Fortunately, there’s a little bug in the `polls` application for us to fix right away: the `Question.was_published_recently()` method returns `True` if the `Question` was published within the last day (which is correct) but also if the `Question`’s `pub_date` field is in the future (which certainly isn’t).

Confirm the bug by using the `shell` to check the method on a question whose date lies in the future:

$ python3 manage.py shell

>>> import datetime
>>> from django.utils import timezone
>>> from polls.models import Question
>>> # create a Question instance with pub_date 30 days in the future
>>> future_question = Question(pub_date=timezone.now() + datetime.timedelta(days=30))
>>> # was it published recently?
>>> future_question.was_published_recently()
True

Since things in the future are not ‘recent’, this is clearly wrong.
#### Creat a test to expose the bug
What we’ve just done in the `shell` to test for the problem is exactly what we can do in an automated test, so let’s turn that into an automated test.

A conventional place for an application’s tests is in the application’s `tests.py` file; the testing system will automatically find tests in any file whose name begins with `test`.

Put the following in the `tests.py` file in the `polls` application:

Here we have created a `django.test.TestCase` subclass with a method that creates a `Question` instance with a `pub_date` in the future. We then check the output of `was_published_recently()` - which ought to be False.

#### Running tests
In the terminal, we can run our test:

$ python3 manage.py test polls

and you'll see something like:

Creating test database for alias 'default'...
System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
F
======================================================================
FAIL: test_was_published_recently_with_future_question (polls.tests.QuestionModelTests)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/path/to/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 16, in test_was_published_recently_with_future_question
    self.assertIs(future_question.was_published_recently(), False)
AssertionError: True is not False

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.001s

FAILED (failures=1)
Destroying test database for alias 'default'...

* What happened is this:
- `manage.py test polls` looked for tests in the `polls` application
- it found a subclass of the `django.test.TestCase` class
- it created a special database for the purpose of testing
- it looked for test methods - ones whose names begin with `test`
- in `test_was_published_recently_with_future_question` it created a `Question` instance whose `pub_date` field is 30 days in the future
- … and using the `assertIs()` method, it discovered that its `was_published_recently()` returns `True`, though we wanted it to return `False`

The test informs us which test failed and even the line on which the failure occurred.
#### Fixing the bug

We already know what the problem is: `Question.was_published_recently()` should return `False` if its `pub_date` is in the future. Amend the method in `models.py`, so that it will only
return `True` if the date is also in the past:

def was_published_recently(self):
    now = timezone.now()
    return now - datetime.timedelta(days=1) <= self.pub_date <= now

and run the teat again:

Creating test database for alias 'default'...
System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.001s

OK
Destroying test database for alias 'default'...

After identifying a bug, we wrote a test that exposes it and corrected the bug in the code so our test passes.

Many other things might go wrong with our application in the future, but we can be sure that we won’t inadvertently reintroduce this bug, because simply running the test will warn us immediately. We can consider this little portion of the application pinned down safely forever.

#### More comprehensive tests
While we’re here, we can further pin down the `was_published_recently()` method; in fact, it would be positively embarrassing if in fixing one bug we had introduced another.

Add two more test methods to the same class, to test the behavior of the method more comprehensively:

def test_was_published_recently_with_old_question(self):
    """
    was_published_recently() returns False for questions whose pub_date
    is older than 1 day.
    """
    time = timezone.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=1, seconds=1)
    old_question = Question(pub_date=time)
    self.assertIs(old_question.was_published_recently(), False)

def test_was_published_recently_with_recent_question(self):
    """
    was_published_recently() returns True for questions whose pub_date
    is within the last day.
    """
    time = timezone.now() - datetime.timedelta(hours=23, minutes=59, seconds=59)
    recent_question = Question(pub_date=time)
    self.assertIs(recent_question.was_published_recently(), True)

And now we have three tests that confirm that `Question.was_published_recently()` returns sensible values for past, recent, and future questions.
Again, `polls` is a simple application, but however complex it grows in the future and whatever other code it interacts with, we now have some guarantee that the method we have written tests for will behave in expected ways.
### Test a view
The polls application is fairly undiscriminating(沒有區分): it will publish any question, including ones whose `pub_date` field lies in the future. We should improve this. Setting a `pub_date` in the future should mean that the Question is published at that moment, but invisible until then.
#### A test for a view
When we fixed the bug above, we wrote the test first and then the code to fix it. In fact that was a simple example of test-driven development, but it doesn’t really matter in which order we do the work.

In our first test, we focused closely on the internal behavior of the code. For this test, we want to check its behavior as it would be experienced by a user through a web browser.

Before we try to fix anything, let’s have a look at the tools at our disposal.

#### The Django test client
**Django provides a test `Client` to simulate a user interacting with the code at the view level.** We can use it in `tests.py` or even in the `shell`.

We will start again with the `shell`, where we need to do a couple of things that won’t be necessary in `tests.py`. The first is to set up the test environment in the shell:

$ python3 manage.py shell

>>> from django.test.utils import setup_test_environment
>>> setup_test_environment()

`setup_test_environment()` installs a template renderer which will allow us to examine some additional attributes on responses such as `response.context` that otherwise wouldn’t be available. Note that this method does not setup a test database, so the following will be run against the existing database and the output may differ slightly depending on what questions you already created. You might get unexpected results if your `TIME_ZONE` in `settings.py` isn’t correct. If you don’t remember setting it earlier, check it before continuing.

Next we need to import the test client class (later in `tests.py` we will use the `django.test.TestCase` class, which comes with its own client, so this won’t be required):

>>> from django.test import Client
>>> # create an instance of the client for our use
>>> client = Client()

With that ready, we can ask the client to do some work for us:

>>> # get a response from '/'
>>> response = client.get('/')
Not Found: /
>>> # we should expect a 404 from that address; if you instead see an
>>> # "Invalid HTTP_HOST header" error and a 400 response, you probably
>>> # omitted the setup_test_environment() call described earlier.
>>> response.status_code
404
>>> # on the other hand we should expect to find something at '/polls/'
>>> # we'll use 'reverse()' rather than a hardcoded URL
>>> from django.urls import reverse
>>> response = client.get(reverse('polls:index'))
>>> response.status_code
200
>>> response.content
b'\n    <ul>\n    \n        <li><a href="/polls/1/">What&#39;s up?</a></li>\n    \n    </ul>\n\n'
>>> response.context['latest_question_list']
<QuerySet [<Question: What's up?>]>

#### Improving our view
The list of polls shows polls that aren’t published yet (i.e. those that have a `pub_date` in the future). Let’s fix that.

We need to amend the `get_queryset()` method and change it so that it also checks the date by comparing it with `timezone.now()`. First we need to add an import:

from django.utils import timezone

and then we must amend the `get_queryset` method like so:

def get_queryset(self):
    """
    Return the last five published questions (not including those set to be
    published in the future).
    """
    return Question.objects.filter(
        pub_date__lte=timezone.now()
    ).order_by('-pub_date')[:5]

`Question.objects.filter(pub_date__lte=timezone.now())` returns a queryset containing `Question`s whose `pub_date` is less than or equal to - that is, earlier than or equal to - `timezone.now`.

#### Testing our new view
Now you can satisfy yourself that this behaves as expected by firing up runserver, loading the site in your browser, creating Questions with dates in the past and future, and checking that only those that have been published are listed. You don’t want to have to do that every single time you make any change that might affect this - so let’s also create a test, based on our shell session above.

Add the following to `polls/tests.py`:

from django.urls import reverse

And we'll create a shortcut function to create questions as well as a new test class:

def create_question(question_text, days):
    """
    Create a question with the given `question_text` and published the
    given number of `days` offset to now (negative for questions published
    in the past, positive for questions that have yet to be published).
    """
    time = timezone.now() + datetime.timedelta(days=days)
    return Question.objects.create(question_text=question_text, pub_date=time)


class QuestionIndexViewTests(TestCase):
    def test_no_questions(self):
        """
        If no questions exist, an appropriate message is displayed.
        """
        response = self.client.get(reverse('polls:index'))
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
        self.assertContains(response, "No polls are available.")
        self.assertQuerysetEqual(response.context['latest_question_list'], [])

    def test_past_question(self):
        """
        Questions with a pub_date in the past are displayed on the
        index page.
        """
        create_question(question_text="Past question.", days=-30)
        response = self.client.get(reverse('polls:index'))
        self.assertQuerysetEqual(
            response.context['latest_question_list'],
            ['<Question: Past question.>']
        )

    def test_future_question(self):
        """
        Questions with a pub_date in the future aren't displayed on
        the index page.
        """
        create_question(question_text="Future question.", days=30)
        response = self.client.get(reverse('polls:index'))
        self.assertContains(response, "No polls are available.")
        self.assertQuerysetEqual(response.context['latest_question_list'], [])

    def test_future_question_and_past_question(self):
        """
        Even if both past and future questions exist, only past questions
        are displayed.
        """
        create_question(question_text="Past question.", days=-30)
        create_question(question_text="Future question.", days=30)
        response = self.client.get(reverse('polls:index'))
        self.assertQuerysetEqual(
            response.context['latest_question_list'],
            ['<Question: Past question.>']
        )

    def test_two_past_questions(self):
        """
        The questions index page may display multiple questions.
        """
        create_question(question_text="Past question 1.", days=-30)
        create_question(question_text="Past question 2.", days=-5)
        response = self.client.get(reverse('polls:index'))
        self.assertQuerysetEqual(
            response.context['latest_question_list'],
            ['<Question: Past question 2.>', '<Question: Past question 1.>']
        )

Let’s look at some of these more closely.

First is a question shortcut function, `create_question`, to take some repetition out of the process of creating questions.

`test_no_questions` doesn’t create any questions, but checks the message: “No polls are available.” and verifies the `latest_question_list` is empty. Note that the `django.test.TestCase` class provides some additional assertion methods. In these examples, we use `assertContains()` and `assertQuerysetEqual()`.

In `test_past_question`, we create a question and verify that it appears in the list.

In `test_future_question`, we create a question with a `pub_date` in the future. The database is reset for each test method, so the first question is no longer there, and so again the index shouldn’t have any questions in it.

And so on. In effect, we are using the tests to tell a story of admin input and user experience on the site, and checking that at every state and for every new change in the state of the system, the expected results are published.

#### Testing the Detailview
What we have works well; however, even though future questions don’t appear in the index, users can still reach them if they know or guess the right URL. So we need to add a similar constraint to DetailView:

class DetailView(generic.DetailView):
    ...
    def get_queryset(self):
        """
        Excludes any questions that aren't published yet.
        """
        return Question.objects.filter(pub_date__lte=timezone.now())

And of course, we will add some tests, to check that a `Question` whose `pub_date` is in the past can be displayed, and that one with a `pub_date` in the future is not:

class QuestionDetailViewTests(TestCase):
    def test_future_question(self):
        """
        The detail view of a question with a pub_date in the future
        returns a 404 not found.
        """
        future_question = create_question(question_text='Future question.', days=5)
        url = reverse('polls:detail', args=(future_question.id,))
        response = self.client.get(url)
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 404)

    def test_past_question(self):
        """
        The detail view of a question with a pub_date in the past
        displays the question's text.
        """
        past_question = create_question(question_text='Past Question.', days=-5)
        url = reverse('polls:detail', args=(past_question.id,))
        response = self.client.get(url)
        self.assertContains(response, past_question.question_text)

### When testing, more is better
It might seem that our tests are growing out of control. At this rate there will soon be more code in our tests than in our application, and the repetition is unaesthetic(不吸引人的), compared to the elegant conciseness of the rest of our code.

**It doesn’t matter. Let them grow. For the most part, you can write a test once and then forget about it.** It will continue performing its useful function as you continue to develop your program.

**Sometimes tests will need to be updated. Suppose that we amend our views so that only Questions with Choices are published. In that case, many of our existing tests will fail** - telling us exactly which tests need to be amended to bring them up to date, so to that extent tests help look after themselves.

At worst, as you continue developing, you might find that you have some tests that are now redundant. Even that’s not a problem; **in testing redundancy is a good thing**.

**As long as your tests are sensibly arranged, they won’t become unmanageable. Good rules-of-thumb include having:**
* **a separate TestClass for each model or view**
* **a separate test method for each set of conditions you want to test**
* **test method names that describe their function**