python - How do you do something after you render the view? (Django)

Question

I want to do something after I have rendered the view using

return render_to_response()

Are signals the only way to do this? Do I need to write a custom signal or does request_finished give me enough information? Basically I need to know what page was rendered, and then do an action in response to that.

Thanks.

UPDATE FROM COMMENTS: I don't want to hold up the rendering of the page, so I want to render the page first and then do the action.

Answer 1

You spawn a separate thread and have it do the action.

t = threading.Thread(target=do_my_action, args=[my_argument])
# We want the program to wait on this thread before shutting down.
t.setDaemon(False)
t.start()

This will cause 'do_my_action(my_argument)' to be executed in a second thread which will keep working even after you send your Django response and terminate the initial thread. For example it could send an email without delaying the response.