Redirect from Generic View DetailView in Django

Question

I\'m using Django\'s class based DetailView generic view to look up an object for display. Under certain circumstances, rather than displaying the object, I wish to back ou

Answer 1

Developing on Rolo's answer and comments, I came up with the following generic view to serve this purpose:

from django import http
from django.views import generic


class CanonicalDetailView(generic.DetailView):
    """
        A DetailView which redirects to the absolute_url, if necessary.
    """
    def get_object(self, *args, **kwargs):
        # Return any previously-cached object
        if getattr(self, 'object', None):
            return self.object
        return super(CanonicalDetailView, self).get_object(*args, **kwargs)

    def get(self, *args, **kwargs):
        # Make sure to use the canonical URL
        self.object = self.get_object()
        obj_url = self.object.get_absolute_url()
        if self.request.path != obj_url:
            return http.HttpResponsePermanentRedirect(obj_url)
        return super(CanonicalDetailView, self).get(*args, **kwargs);

This is used in the same manner as the normal DetailView, and should work for any model which implements get_absolute_url correctly.