How to get POST data from request?

Question

I just set up an apache server with django, and to test it, made a very simple function in views.py

channel = rabbit_connection()
@csrf_protect
@csrf_exempt
def index(request): 
    data={'text': 'Food truck is awesome! ', 'email': '[email protected]', 'name': 'Bob'}
    callback(json.dumps(data))   
    context = RequestContext(request)    
    return render_to_response('index.html', context_instance=context)

This function works fine if I send a GET or POST request to the server. However I would like to get this data from POST request. Assuming I send request like this:

import pycurl
import simplejson as json

data = json.dumps({'name':'Bob', 'email':'[email protected]', 'text': u"Food truck is awesome!"})

c = pycurl.Curl()
c.setopt(c.URL, 'http://ec2-54-......compute-1.amazonaws.com/index.html')
c.setopt(c.POSTFIELDS, data)
c.setopt(c.VERBOSE, True)

for i in range(100):
    c.perform()

What I would like to have in the view is something like this:

 if request.method == 'POST':
     data = ?????? # Something that will return me my dictionary

Just in case: It is always will be in JSON format and the fields are unknown.

Answer 1

data= request.POST.get('data','')

Will return you a single value (key=data) from your dictionary. If you want the entire dictionary, you simply use request.POST. You are using the QueryDict class here:

In an HttpRequest object, the GET and POST attributes are instances of django.http.QueryDict. QueryDict is a dictionary-like class customized to deal with multiple values for the same key. This is necessary because some HTML form elements, notably , pass multiple values for the same key.

QueryDict instances are immutable, unless you create a copy() of them. That means you can’t change attributes of request.POST and request.GET directly.

-Django Docs

Answer 2

If the data posted is in JSON format, you need to deserialize it:

import simplejson
myDict = simplejson.loads(request.POST.get('data'))