Django: Search form in Class Based ListView

I think your goal is trying to filter queryset based on form submission, if so, by using GET :

class ProfileSearchView(ListView)
    template_name="/your/template.html"
    model = Person

    def get_queryset(self):
        name = self.kwargs.get('name', '')
        object_list = self.model.objects.all()
        if name:
            object_list = object_list.filter(name__icontains=name)
        return object_list

Then all you need to do is write a get method to render template and context.

Maybe not the best approach. By using the code above, you no need define a Django form.

Here’s how it works : Class based views separates its way to render template, to process form and so on. Like, get handles GET response, post handles POST response, get_queryset and get_object is self explanatory, and so on. The easy way to know what’s method available, fire up a shell and type :

from django.views.generic import ListView if you want to know about ListView

and then type dir(ListView). There you can see all the method defined and go visit the source code to understand it. The get_queryset method used to get a queryset. Why not just define it like this, it works too :

class FooView(ListView):
    template_name="foo.html"
    queryset = Photo.objects.all()  # or anything

We can do it like above, but we can’t do dynamic filtering by using that approach. By using get_queryset we can do dynamic filtering, using any data/value/information we have, it means we also can use name parameter that is sent by GET, and it’s available on kwargs, or in this case, on self.kwargs["some_key"] where some_key is any parameter you specified