Django pagination for dynamic urls

Question

I've a dropdown to filter doctor specializations and show the doctors for the selected specialization. Doclisting is the view that shows the list of the doctors. If people don't select anything from the dropdown, it just goes to this url /doclistings/?selection=Choose+a+Speciality...&submit= and show all the doctors. The pagination also works if I click on page 2 and so on /doclistings/?page=2

The problem comes when people select a specialization, for instance Dentist /doclistings/?speciality=Dentist&gender=Select+a+Gender&language=Choose+a+Language and then click on the pagination page 2, it then just shows them the generic /doclistings/?page=2 without the dentist. It's not saving the specialization when the pagination is clicked.

Here is the doclisting view to show the list of doctors

def doclistings(request):
    d = getVariables(request)
    if request.method == "GET":
        form = DropdownSelectionForm(request.GET)
        try:
            s_name = request.GET['speciality']
        except:
            s_name = None
        try:
            l_name = request.GET['language']
        except:
            l_name = None
        try:
            g_name = request.GET['gender']
        except:
            g_name = None

        d['s_name'] = s_name 
        d['l_name'] = l_name
        d['g_name'] = g_name


        try:
            doctors = filter_doctors(request=request, specialization=s_name, gender=g_name, language=l_name).order_by('-netlikes')
            paginator = Paginator(doctors, 15) # Show 15 doctors per page
            page = request.GET.get('page')

        except Exception:
            return error404(request)


        if doctors == None: 
            return error404(request)

        if len(doctors) == 0:
            d['not_found'] = "anything you want here :)"

        try:
            doctors = paginator.page(page)

        except PageNotAnInteger:
            doctors = paginator.page(1)

        except EmptyPage:
            doctors = paginator.page(paginator.num_pages)

    else:
        form = DropdownSelectionForm()

    d['doctors'] = doctors
    d.update({'form': form, 'languages': Language.objects.all()})
    return render_to_response('m1/doclistings.html',d, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Here is the view that filters the doctors

def filter_doctors(request=None, specialization=None, language=None, gender=None):
    query = Doctor.objects.filter()

    if specialization and specialization != "All Doctors":
        try:
            spec = Specialization.objects.get(name = specialization) # assuming that no errors here
            query = query.filter(specialization=spec)
        except:
            return None
    if language and language != "Choose a Language":
        try:
            lang = Language.objects.get(name=language)
            query = query.filter(language=lang)
        except:
            return None
    if gender and gender != "Select a Gender":
        if gender != "Male" and gender != "Female":
            return None
        query = query.filter(gender=gender)
    return query

doclisting.html pagination

<ul class="pagination nav navbar-nav">
    {% if doctors.has_previous %}
            <li><a href="?page={{ doctors.previous_page_number }}">Prev</a></li>
    {% endif %}
    {% for page in doctors.paginator.page_range %}
        <li class="{% if doctors.number == page  %}active{% endif %}"><a href="?page={{page }}">{{ page }}</a></li>
    {% endfor %}

    {% if doctors.has_next %}
        <li> <a href="?page={{ doctors.next_page_number }}">Next</a></li>
    {% endif %}
 </ul>

urls

url(r'^doclistings/$', views.doclistings, name='doclistings'),

Answer 1

Next. Your html is rendering a link with only a page number. try:

<a href="?page={{ doctors.next_page_number }}{% if s_name %}&speciality={{ sname }}{% endif %}">

That should include the specialty name. If that works add the other variables too.

Answer 2

The problem is simply in the hrefs for your next/previous links. You need to ensure you add the language/speciality/gender parameters there as well as the page number.

There are various third-party template filters that will help by inserting the current values from the URL.