Slugify check for existing slugs in table

[Alvin Mites]

Slugify would be more useful if it had an option to set the field name to check against for existing slugs with the same name

[joshuajonah]

I imagine this using an attribute like so:

slugify('some string', unique=True)

How would this work? How would it know which model this was attached to? Remember, it's a string it takes.

If it encountered a duplicate, would it append a hyphen? a hyphen with a number?

How do you see this working amites?

[Alvin Mites]

I suppose to make this work with slugify you would need to either pass 3 optional vars or a dict

unique[boolean], model, field

My ugly workaround for this designed for 1 model:

def unique_name(field_name, name):

clean_name = file_name(name)
test_name = clean_name
count = 1
while True:

dict = [field_name, test_name]
try:

tester = Photo.objects.get(dict)

except:

tester = False

if not tester:

return str(test_name)

else:

test_name = clean_name+str(count)
count = count + 1
tester = False

[Alvin Mites]

same ugly code, but wrapped to be readable

def unique_name(field_name, name):
    clean_name = file_name(name)
    test_name = clean_name
    count = 1
    while True:
        dict = [field_name, test_name]
        try:
            tester = Photo.objects.get(dict)
        except:
            tester = False
        if not tester:
            return str(test_name)
        else:
            test_name = clean_name+str(count)
            count = count + 1
            tester = False

[Luke Plant]

This would only work correctly if it could also save the data to the table. This is certainly beyond what a template filter ought to be doing -- that kind of logic belongs in your view functions or database - this is the reason SlugField exists. Therefore closing as INVALID.

[joshuajonah]

I agree this is outside the scope of a tag. If you require this type of functionality, there are many third party scripts that will allow you to do this in a non-invasive way. For example ​http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/369/ is a pretty nice one. Use that instead amites.