What does request.GET.get mean?

Question

What does request.GET.get mean? I see something like this in Django

page = request.GET.get('page', 1)

which I think is connected to something like

<li><a href="?page={{ users.previous_page_number }}">&laquo;</a></li>

How do they work?

Answer 1

request.GET is the dictionary of the GET variables in the http request made to your server for example:

www.google.com?thisIsAGetVarKey=3&thisIsAnotherOne=hello

request.GET would be: {"thisIsAGetVarKey": 3, "thisIsAnotherOne":"hello"}

Because request.GET is a dictionary, it has the method .get() which retrieves a value for a key in the dictionary

dict_b = {'number': 8, 'alphabet':'A'}
print dict_a['number'] #prints 8
print dict_a.get('alphabet') #prints A

print dict_a['bob'] #throws KeyError
print dict_a.get('bob') #prints None
print dict_a.get('bob', default=8) #prints 8

Answer 2

The request object contains information about the user's request. What data they've sent to the page, where they are coming from, etc.

request.GET contains the GET variables. These are what you see in your browser's address bar. The .get() method is a method used for dictionaries. What your snippet of code is doing is saying, "Get the value of a GET variable with name 'page', and if it doesn't exist, return 1".

Likewise, you will see request.POST used when a user submits a form.

You can read more about GET vs. POST here.

Answer 3

request.GET is the dictionary of the 'GET' variables in the http request made to your server for example:
www.google.com?thisIsAGetVarKey=3&thisIsAnotherOne=hello

request.GET would be: {"thisIsAGetVarKey": 3, "thisIsAnotherOne":"hello"}

Because request.GET is a dictionary, it has the method .get() which retrieves a value for a key in the dictionary -

dict_a = {'age': 3}
print dict_a['age'] #prints 3
print dict_a.get('a') #also prints 3

print dict_a['hello'] #throws KeyError
print dict_a.get('hello') #prints None
print dict_a.get('hello', default=3) #prints 3