QueryDict always empty from AJAX POST

Question

I have seen a few of these questions asked but I have tried to implement their solutions and it hasn't worked for me.

I am trying to send a basic AJAX request to a django view using POST. Here is my JQuery:

$('#save-button').click(function() {
    var names = ['BLOGGS Joe', 'SMITH John'];
    data = JSON.stringify(names);
    $.ajax({
        "contentType": "application/json; charset=utf-8",
        "data": data,
        "url" : "/ajax/myteam/save/",
        "type": "POST",
        "success": function(response) {

        }
    });
});

And here is my Django view:

def myteam_save(request):
   if request.method == 'POST':
       if request.POST:
           print 'Hurray'
       else:
           print 'Boo'
       response = HttpResponse(json.dumps({'code':'ok'}), content_type='application/json')
       return response

When I examine whats happening in Firebug I see that the post is being made as I intend but the QueryDict object from request.POST is always empty.

I have been careful about csrf tokens I think and even tried turning off the 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware' in my settings but this appears to have no effect.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

As @Sergio told, you need to decode the request.body in you views.py. This is the solution by using Django 3.1 and Fetch.

def myteam_save(request):
    if request.method == 'POST' and request.headers.get("contentType": "application/json"):
        body_unicode = request.body.decode('utf-8')
        received_json = json.loads(body_unicode)

    return JsonResponse(received_json, safe=False)

I am not familiar with AJAX. So I post how typical POST with XHR should be using Fetch. Assuming varKey and varValue is pre-defined variables with value to send as json:

According to official documentation you have to pass it for security reasons.

function getCookie(name) {
    let cookieValue = null;
    if (document.cookie && document.cookie !== '') {
        const cookies = document.cookie.split(';');
        for (let i = 0; i < cookies.length; i++) {
            const cookie = cookies[i].trim();
            // Does this cookie string begin with the name we want?
            if (cookie.substring(0, name.length + 1) === (name + '=')) {
                cookieValue = decodeURIComponent(cookie.substring(name.length + 1));
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return cookieValue;
}
const csrftoken = getCookie('csrftoken');

Below is actual XHR done by using Fetch:

dict = { [varKey]: varValue }

fetch("http://127.0.0.1:8000/bot/api/post/45/", {
    headers: {
        'X-CSRFToken': csrftoken,
        "x-Requested-With": "XMLHttpRequest",
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
    },
    method: 'POST',
    body: JSON.stringify(dict),
    mode: 'same-origin',
})

Answer 2

Django doesn't really de-serialize JSON payloads for you. request.POST is meant to be used for HTML posted forms, and the like.

For JSON payloads, you should de-serialize the request body yourself, for example: json.loads(request.body).

(request.body is how you access the raw payload).