Django Posts Not Working: - ajax

Question

I am using Django 1.2.3 to develop a site. My ajax get requests work fine but the post requests work in development mode (127.0.0.1:8000) but not when I push the site into production using apache + nginx.
Here is an example
urls.py:
(r'api/newdoc/$', 'mysite.documents.views.newdoc'),
views.py
def newdoc(request):
# only process POST request
if request.is_ajax():
data= dict(request.POST)
# save data to db
return HttpResponse(simplejson.dumps([True]))
in javascript:
$.post("/api/newdoc/", {data : mydata}, function(data) { alert(data);}, "json");
my alert is never called .... this is a problem because i want to sanitize this data via a django form and the post requests do not seem to making it to the server (in production only).
what am i doing wrong?
UPDATES:
solution: crsf tokens need to be pushed ajax post requests (not gets) as of django 1.3
also, per the link provide below, the following javascript
$.ajaxSetup({
beforeSend: function(xhr, settings) {
if (!(/^http:.*/.test(settings.url) || /^https:.*/.test(settings.url))) {
// Only send the token to relative URLs i.e. locally.
xhr.setRequestHeader("X-CSRFToken",
$("#csrfmiddlewaretoken").val());
}
}
});
needs to be changed as follows:
$.ajaxSetup({
beforeSend: function(xhr, settings) {
if (!(/^http:.*/.test(settings.url) || /^https:.*/.test(settings.url))) {
// Only send the token to relative URLs i.e. locally.
xhr.setRequestHeader("X-CSRFToken",
$('input[name="csrfmiddlewaretoken"]').val());
}
}
});
the way the csrf token gets rendered in the form must have changed between 1.25 - 1.3??
regardless, it works. thanks for all your help everyone

Answer 1

Can you directly access your javascript files from the production server? Which Django version are you using in production? If you are using 1.2.5+ in production, you will need to push the csrf token to the server during an AJAX post operation.
See the release notes in 1.2.5 and CSRF
To check your Django version:
import django
django.get_version()
Print the above in your production site or from the shell in your production server while making sure you are using the proper Python path.

Answer 2

Your code appears fine with a cursory glance, but I'll show you an example of my ajax form processing code in a hope it'll help with figuring out the error that's occurring. Though, what #dmitry commented should be your first debugging step - use firebug or the inspector to see if the ajax call returns an error.
// js (jQuery 1.5)
$(form).submit(function(event) {
event.preventDefault();
$.post(post_url, $(form).serialize())
.success(function(data, status, jqxhr) {
if (data.success) { // form was valid
$(form)
// other irrelevant code
.siblings('span')
.removeClass('error')
.html('Form Successful');
} else { // form was invalid
$(form).siblings('span').addClass('error').html('Error Occurred');
}
})
.error(function(jqxhr, status, error) { // server error
$(form).siblings('span').addClass('error').html("Error: " + error);
});
});
// django
class AjaxFormView(FormView):
def ajax_response(self, context, success=True):
html = render_to_string(self.template_name, context)
response = simplejson.dumps({'success': success, 'html': html})
return HttpResponse(response, content_type="application/json", mimetype='application/json')
// view deriving from AjaxFormView
def form_valid(self, form):
registration = form.save()
if self.request.is_ajax():
context = {'competition': registration.competition }
return self.ajax_response(context, success=True)
return HttpResponseRedirect(registration.competition.get_absolute_url())
def form_invalid(self, form):
if self.request.is_ajax():
context = { 'errors': 'Error Occurred'}
return self.ajax_response(context, success=False)
return render_to_response(self.template_name, {'errors':form.errors})
Actually, comparing the above to your code, you may need to set the content_type in your django view so that jQuery can understand and process the response. Note that the above is using django 1.3 class-based views, but the logic should be familiar regardless. I use context.success to signal if the form processing passed or failed - since a valid response (json) of any kind will signal the jQuery.post that the request was successful.