Understanding HTMX vs. Traditional Navigation in Django

The issue you're experiencing is related to how HTMX works compared to traditional navigation. Let me explain the difference and provide a solution.

The Problem

When you use a regular anchor tag (<a href="...">) for navigation, the browser performs a full page load, completely replacing the current page with the new one. This is why your anchor tag works as expected.

However, with HTMX's hx-get attribute, you're making an AJAX request that fetches the content from the target URL and then injects it into the current page, rather than navigating to a new page. By default, HTMX will insert the response content into the element specified by hx-target (or into the element with the hx-get attribute if no target is specified).

Solutions

You have a few options to solve this:

Option 1: Use hx-boost on your anchor tag

HTMLCopied
<a href="{% url 'turnover_app:turnover_index' %}" hx-boost="true">TurnOver Log</a>

This enhances your anchor tag with HTMX but maintains the full-page navigation behavior.

Option 2: Use hx-push-url and hx-target with your button

HTMLCopied
<button type="button" id="btn"
   class="btn btn-outline-success"
   hx-headers='{"X-CSRFToken": "{{ csrf_token }}"}'
   hx-get="{% url 'turnover_app:turnover_index' %}"
   hx-push-url="true"
   hx-target="body"
   hx-swap="outerHTML">
   TurnOver Log
</button>

This tells HTMX to:

• Update the browser's URL (hx-push-url)
• Replace the entire body of the page (hx-target="body")
• Replace the outer HTML of the target (hx-swap="outerHTML")

Option 3: Use hx-redirect in your view response

In your turnover_index view, instead of rendering a template, return a response with an HX-Redirect header:

PYTHONCopied
def turnover_index(request):
    # If it's an HTMX request
    if request.headers.get('HX-Request'):
        response = HttpResponse()
        response['HX-Redirect'] = reverse('turnover_app:turnover_index')
        return response
    
    # Normal request handling
    return render(request, 'turnover_app/index.html', context)

Option 4: Use a regular link with query parameters

For passing the PK value, you can use a regular anchor tag with query parameters:

HTMLCopied
<a href="{% url 'turnover_app:turnover_index' %}?pk={{ entry.pk }}">View Entry {{ entry.pk }}</a>

Then in your view:

PYTHONCopied
def turnover_index(request):
    pk = request.GET.get('pk')
    if pk:
        # Get the specific entry
        entry = get_object_or_404(YourModel, pk=pk)
        context = {'entry': entry}
    else:
        # Handle case with no specific entry
        context = {}
    
    return render(request, 'turnover_app/index.html', context)

Recommendation

For your specific case, I recommend using Option 1 or Option 4 as they're the simplest solutions. If you want to stick with HTMX for this navigation, Option 2 would be the most appropriate.

Remember that HTMX is designed for partial page updates, while what you're trying to do is a full page navigation. That's why the anchor tag works as expected but the HTMX button doesn't.