403 Forbidden and request.method showing GET in django

Question

I am trying to send a form data to an app using AJAX.

Javascript part:

function submit_changes() {
var all_data = [A_list, B_list,C_list]
$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "/my_url/",
    contentType: "application/json",
    //dataType: 'json',
    //data:JSON.stringify(all_data),
data:{
    csrfmiddlewaretoken: "{{ csrf_token }}",        
    form:JSON.stringify(all_data),
},

  success: function() {
        alert('Data captured successfully');
        //window.location.reload();
    },
    error: function(){
        alert('Error in data capture')
        //window.location.reload();
    }
});
}

urls.py has this

urlpatterns=[url(r'^my_url/$',views.my_url_fn)]

views.py

def my_url_fn(request):
    print "*** request is ***",request
    if request.method == 'POST':
        print "request is POST"
        return Response(json.dumps(submit_changes(request)))
    elif request.method == 'GET':
        print "request is GET"
        return Response(json.dumps(get_already_present_data()),mimetype='application/json')
    else:
        print "neither post nor get"

Form part from html code is:

<div align="center">
  <form name="myForm" onSubmit="return 0">{% csrf_token %}    
    <input type="text" id="blah1" placeholder="Blah1&hellip;">
        <!-- few more fields -->
  </form> 
</div>
<div align='center'>
  <input id="submit_changes" type="button" align="middle" value="Submit Changes" onclick="submit_changes();" />
</div>

I have loaded the javascript in html. I am getting 403 forbidden error and the request.method is printing GET.

I have two things to ask :

1). Why is request.method GET when it is a POST request?

2). Why am I still getting 403 forbidden error even after giving csrf token?

I have searched a lot and tried these: Adding @csrf_exempt above my view and importing it as from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt. No improvement. I have also tried removing django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware from MIDDLEWARE list in my settings.py. Still no progress! I have another question here. Does this mean changes in settings.py are not getting reflected ? Any help would be greatly appreciated !

Answer 1

You can try this

<script type="text/javascript">

    function getCookie(name) {
        var cookieValue = null;
        if (document.cookie && document.cookie !== '') {
            var cookies = document.cookie.split(';');
            for (var i = 0; i < cookies.length; i++) {
                var cookie = jQuery.trim(cookies[i]);
                // Does this cookie string begin with the name we want?
                if (cookie.substring(0, name.length + 1) === (name + '=')) {
                    cookieValue = decodeURIComponent(cookie.substring(name.length + 1));
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
        return cookieValue;
    }
    var csrftoken = getCookie('csrftoken');
    $(document).ready(function () {
        $.ajax({
            type: 'post',
            url: "{% url "url_to_view" %}",
            headers: {"X-CSRFToken": csrftoken},
            data: {id: "something to view"},
            success: function (response) {
                alert("success");
                });
            },
            failure: function (response) {
                alert(response.d);
            }
        });
    });
</script>

Answer 2

You need to do something like this in JavaScript to correctly set the csrf token. It doesn't need to part of the data, but rather the request headers

function csrfSafeMethod(method) {
    // these HTTP methods do not require CSRF protection
    return (/^(GET|HEAD|OPTIONS|TRACE)$/.test(method));
}
$.ajaxSetup({
    beforeSend: function(xhr, settings) {
        if (!csrfSafeMethod(settings.type) && !this.crossDomain) {
            xhr.setRequestHeader("X-CSRF-Token", CSRF_TOKEN);
        }
    }
});

In django you don't need to do a csrf_exempt as the above code will inject the CSRF token into every ajax request, if needed. (there is a very good reason why CSRF is there so it's best not to exempt it)