Hello,

I have this join:

lawyers = Lawyer.objects.filter(last__iexact=last_name).filter(first__icontains=first_name)

This is the site

If you try Last Name: Abbas and First Name: Amr it tells you that amr abbas has 1 schoolmates.

But if you try First name only it says that there are no lawyers in the database called amr (obviously there is).

If I change (last__iexact=last_name) to (last__icontains=last_name) then leaving Last Name blank works fine and amr is found.

But with last__icontains=last_name if you search for "collin" you also get "collins" and "collingwood" which is not what I want.

Do you know how I can use iexact and also have it ignored if it is blank?

Thanks

This is the view function:

def search_form(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        search_form = SearchForm(request.POST)
        if search_form.is_valid():
            last_name = search_form.cleaned_data['last_name']
            first_name = search_form.cleaned_data['first_name']
            lawyers = Lawyer.objects.filter(last__iexact=last_name).filter(first__icontains=first_name)
            if len(lawyers)==0:
                form = SearchForm()
                return render_to_response('not_in_database.html', {'last': last_name, 'first': first_name, 'form': form})
            if len(lawyers)>1:
                form = SearchForm(initial={'last_name': last_name})
                return render_to_response('more_than_1_match.html', {'lawyers': lawyers, 'last': last_name, 'first': first_name, 'form': form}) 
            q_school = Lawyer.objects.filter(last__icontains=last_name).filter(first__icontains=first_name).values_list('school', flat=True)
            q_year = Lawyer.objects.filter(last__icontains=last_name).filter(first__icontains=first_name).values_list('year_graduated', flat=True)
            lawyers1 = Lawyer.objects.filter(school__iexact=q_school[0]).filter(year_graduated__icontains=q_year[0]).exclude(last__icontains=last_name)
            form = SearchForm()
            return render_to_response('search_results.html', {'lawyers': lawyers1, 'last': last_name, 'first': first_name, 'form': form})
    else:
        form = SearchForm()
        return render_to_response('search_form.html', {'form': form, })