Django Year/Month based posts archive

Question

i\'m new to Django and started an application, i did the models, views, templates, but i want to add some kind of archive to the bottom of the page, something like this http:/

Answer 1

Firstly, the datetime format strings are given in the django docs. I think you want capital instead of lowercase 'M'.

Since you want to display all 12 months of a year, even if only some have posts, we'll create an archives object to pass to the template. I've chosen to use a dictionary where

• the keys are the years
• the values are a list of 12 [datetime, bool] pairs, where datetime represents a month, and bool is True if there are posts for that month.

Here's how we build the archives object in the view.

from datetime import date

def archive(request):
    arch = Post.objects.dates('date', 'month', order='DESC')

    archives = {}

    for i in arch:
        year = i.year
        month = i.month
        try:
            archives[year][month-1][1]=True
        except KeyError:
            # catch the KeyError, and set up list for that year
            archives[year]=[[date(y,m,1),False] for m in xrange(1,13)]
            archives[year][month-1][1]=True

    return render_to_response('blog/arhiva.html', 
              {'archives':sorted(archives.items(),reverse=True)})

In the template, we loop through the months for each year, and display the link if appropriate.

{% for year, month_list in archives %}
  {{ year }} archives: 
  {% for month, has_link in month_list %}
    {% if has_link %}{% endif %}
      {{ month|date:"M" }}
    {% if has_link %}{% endif %}
  {% endfor %}
{% endfor %}

I haven't checked all the code so there might be a couple of bugs. It would be better to use the url template tag for the link, instead of hardcoding the url format. I have a feeling my answer might be overly complicated, but I've spent a while typing it up, so I may as well share it with the world.

---

Internationalization

I haven't used the internationalization features of Django, so I can't really help with the translation. I recommend you have a look at the documentation, and ask another question if there's a particular bit you don't understand.

Having said that, if you want to display the months is Romanian only, here's an ugly way to do it.

First, add the following line to the top of your archive function in the view.

rom_months = ['Ian', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'Mai', 'Iun', 
              'Iul', 'Aug', 'Sept', 'Oct', 'Noi', 'Dec']

Then substitute the following line into your view

archives[year]=[[date(y,k+1,1),False,rom] for k, rom in enumerate(rom_months)]

Finally substitute the following into the template

...
{% for month, has_link, rom_month in month_list %}
  {% if has_link %}{% endif %}
  {{ rom_month }}
...