Currently, we only have a Post model. What about receiving some feedback from your readers and letting them comment?
Creating comment blog model
Let's open blog/models.py and append this piece of code to the end of file:
class Comment(models.Model):
post = models.ForeignKey('blog.Post', on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='comments')
author = models.CharField(max_length=200)
text = models.TextField()
created_date = models.DateTimeField(default=timezone.now)
approved_comment = models.BooleanField(default=False)
def approve(self):
self.approved_comment = True
self.save()
def __str__(self):
return self.text
You can go back to the Django models chapter in the tutorial if you need a refresher on what each of the field types mean.
In this tutorial extension we have a new type of field:
models.BooleanField - this is true/false field.
The related_name option in models.ForeignKey allows us to have access to comments from within the Post model.
Create tables for models in your database
Now it's time to add our comment model to the database. To do this we have to tell Django that we made changes to our model. Type python manage.py makemigrations blog in your command line. You should see output like this:
(myvenv) ~/djangogirls$ python manage.py makemigrations blog
Migrations for 'blog':
0002_comment.py:
- Create model Comment
You can see that this command created another migration file for us in the blog/migrations/ directory. Now we need to apply those changes by typing python manage.py migrate blog in the command line. The output should look like this:
(myvenv) ~/djangogirls$ python manage.py migrate blog
Operations to perform:
Apply all migrations: blog
Running migrations:
Rendering model states... DONE
Applying blog.0002_comment... OK
Our Comment model exists in the database now! Wouldn't it be nice if we had access to it in our admin panel?
Register Comment model in admin panel
To register the Comment model in the admin panel, go to blog/admin.py and add this line:
admin.site.register(Comment)
directly under this line:
admin.site.register(Post)
Remember to import the Comment model at the top of the file, too, like this:
from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Post, Comment
admin.site.register(Post)
admin.site.register(Comment)
Make our comments visible
Go to the blog/templates/blog/post_detail.html file and add the following lines before the {% endblock %}
To fix this error, add this view to blog/views.py:
def add_comment_to_post(request, pk):
post = get_object_or_404(Post, pk=pk)
if request.method == "POST":
form = CommentForm(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
comment = form.save(commit=False)
comment.post = post
comment.save()
return redirect('post_detail', pk=post.pk)
else:
form = CommentForm()
return render(request, 'blog/add_comment_to_post.html', {'form': form})
Remember to import CommentForm at the beginning of the file:
from .forms import PostForm, CommentForm
Now, on the post detail page, you should see the "Add Comment" button.
However, when you click that button, you'll see:
Like the error tells us, the template doesn't exist yet. So, let's create a new one at blog/templates/blog/add_comment_to_post.html and add the following code:
Yay! Now your readers can let you know what they think of your blog posts!
Moderating your comments
Not all of the comments should be displayed. As the blog owner, you probably want the option to approve or delete comments. Let's do something about it.
Go to blog/templates/blog/post_detail.html and change lines:
You'll need to import Comment at the top of the file:
from .models import Post, Comment
Everything works! There is one small tweak we can make. In our post list page -- under posts -- we currently see the number of all the comments the blog post has received. Let's change that to show the number of approved comments there.
To fix this, go to blog/templates/blog/post_list.html and change the line:
If you type python manage.py runserver on the command line and go to in your browser, you should have access to the list of comments, and also the capability to add and remove comments. Play around with the new comments feature!
If you haven't already, you can download all the Bootstrap icons . Unzip the file and copy all the SVG image files into a new folder inside blog/templates/blog/ called icons. That way you can access an icon like hand-thumbs-down.svg using the file path blog/templates/blog/icons/hand-thumbs-down.svg
