date-website

Polls Development Notes

Models

• Question stores text, publish flags, multiple-choice settings, and voting_options (mapped to constants ANYONE, MEMBERS_ONLY, ORDINARY_MEMBERS_ONLY, VOTE_MEMBERS_ONLY). A ManyToManyField to Member via Vote tracks who voted.
• Choice belongs to a question and keeps an integer votes counter plus a helper get_vote_percentage().
• Vote stores which Member voted on which Question at voted_at time (only used when the poll isn’t anonymous).

Views & Flow

• IndexView lists the five most recent published questions.
• DetailView renders a single poll; template decides whether to show results, errors, etc.
• ResultsView shows counts. Only accessible if Question.show_results is true or the template enforces visibility.
• vote view collects request.POST.getlist('choice'), resolves the current user to members.Member if authenticated, and delegates to polls.vote.handle_vote().

Validation Logic (polls/vote.py)

• validate_vote() enforces:
  • Poll not ended (end_vote flag).
  • At least one choice selected.
  • Single-choice poll doesn’t receive multiple picks.
  • If required_multiple_choices is set, exactly that many answers must be picked.
  • Authorization via is_user_authorized_to_vote() which checks membership type and subscription status when necessary.
  • Members can vote only once (unless ANYONE, in which case anonymous visitors can spam; design decision).
• After validation, handle_selected_choices() increments vote counters atomically (using F() expressions) and records the voter membership if authenticated.

Admin

• QuestionAdmin inline-stacks Choice and Vote. VoteInline disallows adding rows manually and limits deletion to superusers.
• No slug fields; URLs use numeric primary keys.

Extending

• Consider recording anonymous voters’ IP hash if abuse becomes a concern when ANYONE polls are used.
• Add scheduling fields (opens_at, closes_at) if manual toggling of published and end_vote becomes error-prone.
• Results caching could be useful for high-traffic polls; currently every refresh hits the database and recalculates totals.

This site is open source. Improve this page.