Having trouble with notifications feature in Django

Question:

Created a notification feature in my django project. I’ve got all the functionality down and it works except for one thing. I want the template to display a different message depending on what action is committed. All it currently displays is ‘The ticket has been updated’ instead of ‘A new ticket has been assigned to you.’ How do I fix this?

Here is what i have so far.

template

<div class="dropdown-content" id="myDropdown">
          {% if notifications %}
            {% for notification in notifications %}
              {% if notification.notification_type == 'created' %}
                <a href="#">{{notification.ticket.name}}: A new ticket has been assigned to you.</a>
              {% else %}
                <a href="#">{{notification.ticket.name}}: The ticket has been updated.</a>
              {% endif %}
            {% endfor %}
          {% else %}
            <a href="#">No new notifications</a>
          {% endif %}
</div>

models.py for notification

class Notification(models.Model):
    OPTIONS = (
        ('created', 'created'),
        ('updated', 'updated'),
    )
    
    recipient = models.ForeignKey(CustomUser, on_delete=models.SET_NULL, null=True, related_name='notifications')
    ticket = models.ForeignKey(Ticket, on_delete=models.SET_NULL, null=True, related_name='notifications')
    message = models.TextField()
    notification_type = models.CharField(choices=OPTIONS, max_length=15, null=True)
    is_read = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

signals.py for notification

@receiver(post_save, sender=Ticket)
def create_notification(sender, instance, created, **kwargs):
    if created:
        notification_type = 'created'
    else:
        notification_type = 'updated'
        
    assignees = instance.assignee.all()
    for assignee in assignees:
        Notification.objects.create(recipient=assignee, notification_type=notification_type)

this is createTicket function inside the views.py

@login_required
def createTicket(request):
    form = TicketForm()
    
    categories = Category.objects.all()
    users = CustomUser.objects.all()
    if request.method == 'POST':
        category_name = request.POST.get('category')
        category, created = Category.objects.get_or_create(name=category_name)
        
        # Retrieve the project object that the ticket should be connected with
        project_id = request.POST.get('project')
        project = Project.objects.get(id=project_id)
        
        # Retrieve the list of selected users from the form
        assignee_ids = request.POST.getlist('assignee')
        assignee = CustomUser.objects.filter(id__in=assignee_ids)
        
        ticket = Ticket.objects.create(
            host = request.user,
            category=category,
            project=project,
            name=request.POST.get('name'),
            status=request.POST.get('status'),
            priority=request.POST.get('priority'),
            type=request.POST.get('type'),
            description=request.POST.get('description'),
        )
        
        # Add the selected users to the ticket
        ticket.assignee.set(assignee)
        ticket.save()
        
        return redirect('ticket', pk=ticket.id)
    
    context = {'form': form, 'categories': categories, 'users': users}
    return render(request, 'tickets/ticket_form.html', context)
Asked By: mdaw11

||

Answers:

ticket = Ticket.objects.create(
            host = request.user,
            category=category,
            project=project,
            name=request.POST.get('name'),
            status=request.POST.get('status'),
            priority=request.POST.get('priority'),
            type=request.POST.get('type'),
            description=request.POST.get('description'),
        )
        
        # Add the selected users to the ticket
        ticket.assignee.set(assignee)
        ticket.save()

This will trigger your signals twice, 1 for create and another one for save.

You don’t need the last line, just put

ticket.assignee.set(assignee)

is enough.

Btw when you create a ticket and signal triggers, you don’t have any assignee yet, you should actually do it via m2m_changed signal

Answered By: Đào Minh Hạt