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Matt Layman
Matt Layman

Posted on • Originally published at mattlayman.com

Handle Default Values - Building SaaS #65

In this episode, I updated a model to handle the default duration of new tasks. This default needed to come from the Course model instead of the CourseTask model so we had to determine how best to set that data in various forms. I also fixed some drop down selection bugs that populated a form with the wrong data. We made sure that all the code was well tested.

I created a new default_task_duration field to the Course model. The field records the number of minutes that will be set when create a new task. We added the field and wrote some model tests to confirm the behavior.

Then we updated the Course creation and edit forms. To do this, I needed to add the new field to the CourseForm model form and update the template to include the new field. After that, I fixed the POST tests that broke because the required field was missing.

Once the Course form was done, I moved on to the CourseTask views. We had to use get_initial to populate the CourseTask form with the right data from the Course. The data in get_initial was also needed by get_context_data so I created a cached_property to store the course and save an extra SQL query.

The next issue that I fixed was a problem with the selector for the task form. The form would display the wrong grade levels when a task could be added to multiple grades. The code pulled the grades from the current school year instead of the pulling the grade levels from the schoool year associated with the course. We found the error in the code and corrected the queries that were needed. After correcting the code, I added some test code to confirm that the problem was fixed programmatically.

At the end of the stream, I answered some questions from the stream about software interviews and portfolios.

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