List View - Function based Views Django

A List View is used to show multiple records from a database, such as posts, products, or users.

• Retrieves all required records from the database.
• Passes the data to a template for rendering.
• Displays the records in a clear format like a list or table.
• Provides an easy way to show collections of items on a page.

Example: Consider a project named 'geeksforgeeks' having an app named 'geeks'. After creating the project and app, the next step is to create a model, whose records will be displayed using the List View.

Step 1: Define a Model

In geeks/models.py:

Step 2: Apply Migrations

Run the following commands to create the corresponding database table

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

Step 3: Create Sample Data

Use Django's shell to create model instances:

python manage.py shell

Enter following commands in shell:

from geeks.models import GeeksModel

GeeksModel.objects.create(title="title1", description="description1")
GeeksModel.objects.create(title="title2", description="description2")
GeeksModel.objects.create(title="title3", description="description3")

Now we have everything ready for back end. To verify that instances have been created, exit the shell using exit() command and run the development server using this command:

python manage.py runserver

After running the command, visit the development url: http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Step 4: Create the List View

In geeks/views.py, define a function-based view to fetch and render the model instances:

Step 5: Create the Template

In templates/list_view.html, add the following HTML to display the data:

Run the development server and visit the URL http://127.0.0.1:8000/ to see the list view in action.

Output:

Sorting the List (Descending Order)

You can order the results in reverse (newest first) by modifying the view:

order_by("-id"): sorts the items in descending order of their ID.

Output:

Filtering the List

You can also filter the data shown in the list view. For example, let’s add a new entry:

Launch the shell using the below command:

python manage.py shell 

Enter the following commands in shell:

from geeks.models import GeeksModel

GeeksModel.objects.create(title = "Naveen", description = "GFG is Best").save()

To display only items with the word “title” in their title, update the view:

title__icontains="title" filters entries whose title contains the word "title", case-insensitively.

Run the development server and visit the URL http://127.0.0.1:8000/ again to see the filtered output.