Django better way to avoid KeyError?

Question

I was building a simple weather app with Django. This app allows the user to enter a city name and it will give the weather details of that city. I am using an API to fetch the data.

I wanted to avoid KeyError when an user enters an empty string or misspelled a city. I kinda achieved my goal, but I wonder if there is a much easier way to do this.

Here is my code:

from django.shortcuts import render
import requests
from datetime import datetime
import geonamescache  # Used for match checking


def home(request):

    # Checks for legitimate cities
    if 'search-city' in request.POST:
        gc = geonamescache.GeonamesCache()
        while request.POST['search-city'] != '':
            cities = str(gc.get_cities_by_name(request.POST['search-city']))
            if request.POST['search-city'] in cities:
                city = request.POST['search-city']
                break
            elif request.POST['search-city'] not in cities:
                city = 'Amsterdam'
                break

        while request.POST['search-city'] == '':
            city = 'Amsterdam'
            break

    # Call current weather
    URL = 'https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather'
    API_KEY = 'MY_KEY'
    PAR = {

        'q': city,
        'appid': API_KEY,
        'units': 'metric'
    }

    req = requests.get(url=URL, params=PAR)
    res = req.json()

    city = res['name']
    description = res['weather'][0]['description']
    temp = res['main']['temp']
    icon = res['weather'][0]['icon']
    country = res['sys']['country']
    day = datetime.now().strftime("%d/%m/%Y %H:%M")

    weather_data = {

        'description': description,
        'temp': temp,
        'icon': icon,
        'day': day,
        'country': country,
        'city': city
    }

    return render(request, 'weatherapp/home.html', weather_data)

Could you guys show me how you would do this? Thanks!

you may also want to implement fuzzy matching when the city is not found. There's a couple of libraries that can make this easy for you to implement, and easy for your users if they are prone to fat-finger errors — Edo Akse
– Edo Akse, Commented Jun 10, 2022 at 12:43

daodennis · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-10 12:45:29Z

1

I have not personally used this, but Django and other frameworks provide a way to do something called "Form Validation." https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.0/ref/forms/validation/, but this would require a few more things to be in place like a class that models what your form looks like too: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.0/topics/forms/

answered Jun 10, 2022 at 12:45

daodennis

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