Sending a jQuery POST to a Django View

Question

I am sending a POST request via $.ajax() to a Django view from a page that is on HTTP - I used the AJAX snippet for CSRF provided here. I can view the csrftoken cookie as Secure in Firebug; I suppose this is why the the X-Csrftoken header for the POST request is being sent as null.

Is there any way I can actually access this cookie's value? I am currently bypassing the 403 error (because of the POST being sent with a null CSRF token header) by adding @csrf_exempt to my view - but would like a proper CSRF method in place.

UPDATE FOR CLARITY: I am not submitting this data via forms. I am simply sending the POST when a javascript file (containing the AJAX call) is loaded on the page.

Answer 1

What I do for getting a proper csrf solution in place is this:

include my {% csrf_token %} in a place it makes sense.

var csrfToken = $('input[name="csrfmiddlewaretoken"]').val();
$.ajax({
    url: $form.attr('action'),
    type: 'POST',
    data: postData,
    csrfmiddlewaretoken: csrfToken,
    dataType: 'json',
    success: function(data) { }
});

I have struggled to get this working:

var csrftoken = $.cookie('csrftoken');
$.ajaxSetup({
    beforeSend: function(xhr, settings) {
        xhr.setRequestHeader("X-CSRFToken", csrftoken);
    }
});

But so far the first solution has proven to be the one that works best.