Django search form help want to be able to do partial search as well

I have a search for that looks for an alternate_id for a particular item. This search for can allow alternative if to do multiple searches if there is a comma without spaces. But I want my search form to be able to do a "partial search" as well. So searching for a*,2ndid will give all results a......,2ndid开发者_C百科

Alternate id is a string. Not an integer. The only reason why I have as __inwas because I could perform multiple searches.

def search_item(request, client_id = 0):
    client = None
    if client_id != 0:
        try:
            client = models.Client.objects.get(pk = client_id)
        except:
            pass

        items = None
        Q_alt_ids = Q()
        if request.method == 'POST':
             form = forms.SearchItemForm(request.POST)
             if form.is_valid():
             alternate_id = form.cleaned_data['alternate_id']
             items = client.storageitem_set.all()
       if alternate_id:
                alternate_ids= alternate_id.lower().split(",")
                Q_alt_ids = Q(alternative_id__in = alternate_ids)
        return render_to_response('items.html', {'items':items, 'client':client}, context_instance = RequestContext(request))
 else:
        HttpResponse(client)
        if client is not None:
            form = forms.SearchItemForm(initial = {'client':client.pk})
        else:
            form = forms.SearchItemForm()
    return render_to_response('search_items.html', {'form':form}, context_instance = RequestContext(request))

Aside from writing your own SQL, I think the only out of the box solution that can handle a robust query like a wildcard is a regular expression. If the wildcard is always in the same place, such as followed by a partial string, you could use the field__startswith=partial lookup type.

But in general, wildcards = regex

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/querysets/#iregex

BUT, I have a sneaking suspicion you might be looking for the contains or icontains filter lookup type.

If you want to match 'hello', 'ello', 'world' in 'hello world':

# first split the string by comma
queries = form.cleaned_data.get('query', '').split(',')

# populate queries list
query_list = [Q(**{'alternative_id__icontains' : query }) for query in queries]

# join queries list with the OR operator
results = MyModel.objects.filter(  reduce(operator.or_, query_list)  )

thanks yuji for the answer. These change are needed to make it work.

 return_all = False
    filters = []
                 if alternate_id:
                    alternate_ids = alternate_id.lower().split(",") 
                    for item in alternate_ids:
                    if '*' not in item:
                        filters.append( Q(alternative_id=item) )
                    elif item == '*':
                        return_all = True
                    elif item.startswith('*') and item.endswith('*'):
                        filters.append( Q(alternative_id__icontains=item.strip('*')) )
                    elif item.startswith('*'):
                        filters.append( Q(alternative_id__endswith=item.strip('*')) )
                    elif item.endswith('*'):
                        filters.append( Q(alternative_id__startswith=item.strip('*')) )
                    else:
                        assert False, "Wildcard in invalid position (valid is.. *XX, *XX*, XX*)"

if not filters or return_all:
    items = items.all()
else:
    items = items.filter(reduce(operator.or_, filters))