Search and filter options in Django - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Search and filter options

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Django web page to show a list of books. Users want to search for books by title and filter them by genre.

🎯 Goal: Create a Django view and template that display a list of books. Add a search box to find books by title and a dropdown to filter books by genre.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of book dictionaries with title and genre

Add a variable to hold the search keyword

Filter the books list by the search keyword and selected genre

Render the filtered books in a Django template with a search form

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Search and filter features are common in websites and apps to help users find content quickly and easily.

💼 Career

Understanding how to implement search and filter options in Django is a key skill for web developers building user-friendly interfaces.

1

Create the initial books data

Create a list called books with these exact dictionaries: {'title': 'Django for Beginners', 'genre': 'Programming'}, {'title': 'Cooking 101', 'genre': 'Cooking'}, {'title': 'Python Tricks', 'genre': 'Programming'}, {'title': 'Gardening Basics', 'genre': 'Hobby'}.

Django

# Create the books list with dictionaries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a Python list with dictionaries. Each dictionary has keys 'title' and 'genre'.

2

Add search and filter variables

Create two variables: search_query set to an empty string '', and selected_genre set to 'All'.

Django

books = [
    {'title': 'Django for Beginners', 'genre': 'Programming'},
    {'title': 'Cooking 101', 'genre': 'Cooking'},
    {'title': 'Python Tricks', 'genre': 'Programming'},
    {'title': 'Gardening Basics', 'genre': 'Hobby'}
]

# Create search_query and selected_genre variables
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Set search_query to an empty string and selected_genre to the string 'All'.

3

Filter books by search and genre

Create a list called filtered_books that includes books from books where the search_query is in the book's title (case insensitive) and the book's genre matches selected_genre or selected_genre is 'All'. Use a list comprehension.

Django

books = [
    {'title': 'Django for Beginners', 'genre': 'Programming'},
    {'title': 'Cooking 101', 'genre': 'Cooking'},
    {'title': 'Python Tricks', 'genre': 'Programming'},
    {'title': 'Gardening Basics', 'genre': 'Hobby'}
]

search_query = ''
selected_genre = 'All'

# Create filtered_books list using list comprehension
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list comprehension with conditions for title containing search_query and genre matching selected_genre or 'All'.

4

Render filtered books in Django template

In a Django template, create a form with a text input named search_query and a select dropdown named selected_genre with options 'All', 'Programming', 'Cooking', and 'Hobby'. Below the form, use a for loop over filtered_books to display each book's title and genre inside <li> tags.

Django

books = [
    {'title': 'Django for Beginners', 'genre': 'Programming'},
    {'title': 'Cooking 101', 'genre': 'Cooking'},
    {'title': 'Python Tricks', 'genre': 'Programming'},
    {'title': 'Gardening Basics', 'genre': 'Hobby'}
]

search_query = ''
selected_genre = 'All'

filtered_books = [book for book in books if search_query.lower() in book['title'].lower() and (selected_genre == 'All' or book['genre'] == selected_genre)]

# Write Django template code for form and book list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a GET form with input and select elements named exactly search_query and selected_genre. Loop over filtered_books with Django template tags.