HTTP forward from generic CreateView in Django?

Question

I have a CreateView for a patient object (simplified):

from django.views.generic.edit import CreateView
import models

class PatientCreate(CreateView):
    model = models.Patient
    fields = ['name', 'country', ..]
    # template_name is "patient_form.html" from CreateView

(I have overridden form_valid and get_context_data to set a few things by default, see for example here, but I think that's irrelevant.)

If a patient by the same name already exists, I'd like to simply HTTP forward to the detail page for that patient instead of creating a new one.

How do I do that?

I'm using Django 1.11.

Answer 1

You can add this logic in form_valid override. For example:

def form_valid(self, form):
    name = form.cleaned_data.get('name')
    your_model_objects = YourModel.objects.filter(name=name)
    if your_model_objects.exists():  # lazy query, won't hit the database
        obj = your_model_objects.first()  # as entry exists, fetch the first object
        return redirect(reverse('detail-url', args=[obj.pk])
    else:
        return super(YourClass, self).form_valid(form)