Django Recipe Sharing Tutorial – 21. The Meal Planner View

Welcome back to our Django Recipe Sharing Tutorial series! In this tutorial, we will be creating the Meal Planner view for our recipe sharing application. The Meal Planner view will allow users to plan their meals for the week by selecting recipes from their saved recipes. Let’s get started!

Step 1: Create the MealPlanner model

First, we need to create a new model for the Meal Planner. Open your models.py file and add the following code:


class MealPlanner(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
recipes = models.ManyToManyField(Recipe)
week_start_date = models.DateField()


This model will store the user who is planning the meals, the list of recipes they have selected, and the start date of the week they are planning for.

Step 2: Create the Meal Planner view

Next, we need to create a view for the Meal Planner. Open your views.py file and add the following code:


def meal_planner(request):
meal_planner = MealPlanner.objects.filter(user=request.user).first()
if not meal_planner:
meal_planner = MealPlanner(user=request.user, week_start_date=datetime.date.today())
meal_planner.save()
return render(request, 'meal_planner.html', {'meal_planner': meal_planner})


This view will retrieve the Meal Planner object for the current user, or create a new one if it doesn’t exist. It will then render the ‘meal_planner.html’ template with the Meal Planner object passed in as context.

Step 3: Create the meal_planner.html template

Finally, we need to create the template for the Meal Planner view. Create a new file named ‘meal_planner.html’ in your templates directory and add the following code:

Meal Planner

Week starting on: {{ meal_planner.week_start_date }}

{% for recipe in meal_planner.recipes.all %}
• {{ recipe.title }}

{% endfor %}

This template will display the selected recipes for the current user’s Meal Planner, along with the start date of the week they are planning for.

That’s it! You have now created the Meal Planner view for your Django Recipe Sharing application. Users can now plan their meals for the week by selecting recipes from their saved recipes. Stay tuned for more tutorials in this series!