I’m building a support ticket tracking app and have a few models I’d like to create from one page. Tickets belong to a Customer via a ForeignKey. Notes belong to Tickets via a ForeignKey as well. I’d like to have the option of selecting a Customer (that’s a whole separate project) OR creating a new Customer, then creating a Ticket and finally creating a Note assigned to the new ticket.

Since I’m fairly new to Django, I tend to work iteratively, trying out new features each time. I’ve played with ModelForms but I want to hide some of the fields and do some complex validation. It seems like the level of control I’m looking for either requires formsets or doing everything by hand, complete with a tedious, hand-coded template page, which I’m trying to avoid.

Is there some lovely feature I’m missing? Does someone have a good reference or example for using formsets? I spent a whole weekend on the API docs for them and I’m still clueless. Is it a design issue if I break down and hand-code everything?

This really isn’t too hard to implement with ModelForms. So lets say you have Forms A, B, and C. You print out each of the forms and the page and now you need to handle the POST.

if request.POST():
    a_valid = formA.is_valid()
    b_valid = formB.is_valid()
    c_valid = formC.is_valid()
    # we do this since 'and' short circuits and we want to check to whole page for form errors
    if a_valid and b_valid and c_valid:
        a = formA.save()
        b = formB.save(commit=False)
        c = formC.save(commit=False)
        b.foreignkeytoA = a
        b.save()
        c.foreignkeytoB = b
        c.save()

Here are the docs for custom validation.

I just was in about the same situation a day ago, and here are my 2 cents:

1) I found arguably the shortest and most concise demonstration of multiple model entry in single form here: http://collingrady.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/editing-multiple-objects-in-django-with-newforms/ .

In a nutshell: Make a form for each model, submit them both to template in a single <form>, using prefix keyarg and have the view handle validation. If there is dependency, just make sure you save the “parent” model before dependant, and use parent’s ID for foreign key before commiting save of “child” model. The link has the demo.

2) Maybe formsets can be beaten into doing this, but as far as I delved in, formsets are primarily for entering multiples of the same model, which may be optionally tied to another model/models by foreign keys. However, there seem to be no default option for entering more than one model’s data and that’s not what formset seems to be meant for.

I very recently had the some problem and just figured out how to do this. Assuming you have three classes, Primary, B, C and that B,C have a foreign key to primary

    class PrimaryForm(ModelForm):
        class Meta:
            model = Primary

    class BForm(ModelForm):
        class Meta:
            model = B
            exclude = ('primary',)

    class CForm(ModelForm):
         class Meta:
            model = C
            exclude = ('primary',)

    def generateView(request):
        if request.method == 'POST': # If the form has been submitted...
            primary_form = PrimaryForm(request.POST, prefix = "primary")
            b_form = BForm(request.POST, prefix = "b")
            c_form = CForm(request.POST, prefix = "c")
            if primary_form.is_valid() and b_form.is_valid() and c_form.is_valid(): # All validation rules pass
                    print "all validation passed"
                    primary = primary_form.save()
                    b_form.cleaned_data["primary"] = primary
                    b = b_form.save()
                    c_form.cleaned_data["primary"] = primary
                    c = c_form.save()
                    return HttpResponseRedirect("/viewer/%s/" % (primary.name))
            else:
                    print "failed"

        else:
            primary_form = PrimaryForm(prefix = "primary")
            b_form = BForm(prefix = "b")
            c_form = Form(prefix = "c")
     return render_to_response('multi_model.html', {
     'primary_form': primary_form,
     'b_form': b_form,
     'c_form': c_form,
      })

This method should allow you to do whatever validation you require, as well as generating all three objects on the same page. I have also used javascript and hidden fields to allow the generation of multiple B,C objects on the same page.

The MultiModelForm from django-betterforms is a convenient wrapper to do what is described in Gnudiff’s answer. It wraps regular ModelForms in a single class which is transparently (at least for basic usage) used as a single form. I’ve copied an example from their docs below.

# forms.py
from django import forms
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
from betterforms.multiform import MultiModelForm
from .models import UserProfile

User = get_user_model()

class UserEditForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        fields = ('email',)

class UserProfileForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        fields = ('favorite_color',)

class UserEditMultiForm(MultiModelForm):
    form_classes = {
        'user': UserEditForm,
        'profile': UserProfileForm,
    }

# views.py
from django.views.generic import UpdateView
from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse_lazy
from django.shortcuts import redirect
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
from .forms import UserEditMultiForm

User = get_user_model()

class UserSignupView(UpdateView):
    model = User
    form_class = UserEditMultiForm
    success_url = reverse_lazy('home')

    def get_form_kwargs(self):
        kwargs = super(UserSignupView, self).get_form_kwargs()
        kwargs.update(instance={
            'user': self.object,
            'profile': self.object.profile,
        })
        return kwargs

I currently have a workaround functional (it passes my unit tests). It is a good solution to my opinion when you only want to add a limited number of fields from other models.

Am I missing something here ?

class UserProfileForm(ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, instance=None, *args, **kwargs):
        # Add these fields from the user object
        _fields = ('first_name', 'last_name', 'email',)
        # Retrieve initial (current) data from the user object
        _initial = model_to_dict(instance.user, _fields) if instance is not None else {}
        # Pass the initial data to the base
        super(UserProfileForm, self).__init__(initial=_initial, instance=instance, *args, **kwargs)
        # Retrieve the fields from the user model and update the fields with it
        self.fields.update(fields_for_model(User, _fields))

    class Meta:
        model = UserProfile
        exclude = ('user',)

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        u = self.instance.user
        u.first_name = self.cleaned_data['first_name']
        u.last_name = self.cleaned_data['last_name']
        u.email = self.cleaned_data['email']
        u.save()
        profile = super(UserProfileForm, self).save(*args,**kwargs)
        return profile

“I want to hide some of the fields and do some complex validation.”

I start with the built-in admin interface.

1. Build the ModelForm to show the desired fields.

2. Extend the Form with the validation rules within the form. Usually this is a clean method.

   Be sure this part works reasonably well.

Once this is done, you can move away from the built-in admin interface.

Then you can fool around with multiple, partially related forms on a single web page. This is a bunch of template stuff to present all the forms on a single page.

Then you have to write the view function to read and validated the various form things and do the various object saves().

“Is it a design issue if I break down and hand-code everything?” No, it’s just a lot of time for not much benefit.

According to Django documentation, inline formsets are for this purpose: “Inline formsets is a small abstraction layer on top of model formsets. These simplify the case of working with related objects via a foreign key”.

See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/forms/modelforms/#inline-formsets

Is it possible to have multiple models included in a single ModelForm in django? I am trying to create a profile edit form. So I need to include some fields from the User model and the UserProfile model. Currently I am using 2 forms like this

class UserEditForm(ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        model = User
        fields = ("first_name", "last_name")

class UserProfileForm(ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        model = UserProfile
        fields = ("middle_name", "home_phone", "work_phone", "cell_phone")

Is there a way to consolidate these into one form or do I just need to create a form and handle the db loading and saving myself?

You can just show both forms in the template inside of one <form> html element. Then just process the forms separately in the view. You’ll still be able to use form.save() and not have to process db loading and saving yourself.

In this case you shouldn’t need it, but if you’re going to be using forms with the same field names, look into the prefix kwarg for django forms. (I answered a question about it here).

You can try to use this pieces of code:

class CombinedFormBase(forms.Form):
    form_classes = []

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(CombinedFormBase, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        for f in self.form_classes:
            name = f.__name__.lower()
            setattr(self, name, f(*args, **kwargs))
            form = getattr(self, name)
            self.fields.update(form.fields)
            self.initial.update(form.initial)

    def is_valid(self):
        isValid = True
        for f in self.form_classes:
            name = f.__name__.lower()
            form = getattr(self, name)
            if not form.is_valid():
                isValid = False
        # is_valid will trigger clean method
        # so it should be called after all other forms is_valid are called
        # otherwise clean_data will be empty
        if not super(CombinedFormBase, self).is_valid() :
            isValid = False
        for f in self.form_classes:
            name = f.__name__.lower()
            form = getattr(self, name)
            self.errors.update(form.errors)
        return isValid

    def clean(self):
        cleaned_data = super(CombinedFormBase, self).clean()
        for f in self.form_classes:
            name = f.__name__.lower()
            form = getattr(self, name)
            cleaned_data.update(form.cleaned_data)
        return cleaned_data

Example Usage:

class ConsumerRegistrationForm(CombinedFormBase):
    form_classes = [RegistrationForm, ConsumerProfileForm]

class RegisterView(FormView):
    template_name = "register.html"
    form_class = ConsumerRegistrationForm

    def form_valid(self, form):
        # some actions...
        return redirect(self.get_success_url())

erikbwork and me both had the problem that one can only include one model into a generic Class Based View. I found a similar way of approaching it like Miao, but more modular.

I wrote a Mixin so you can use all generic Class Based Views. Define model, fields and now also child_model and child_field – and then you can wrap fields of both models in a tag like Zach describes.

class ChildModelFormMixin: 
    ''' extends ModelFormMixin with the ability to include ChildModelForm '''
    child_model = ""
    child_fields = ()
    child_form_class = None

    def get_child_model(self):
        return self.child_model

    def get_child_fields(self):
        return self.child_fields

    def get_child_form(self):
        if not self.child_form_class:
            self.child_form_class = model_forms.modelform_factory(self.get_child_model(), fields=self.get_child_fields())
        return self.child_form_class(**self.get_form_kwargs())

    def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
        if 'child_form' not in kwargs:
            kwargs['child_form'] = self.get_child_form()
        return super().get_context_data(**kwargs)

    def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        form = self.get_form()
        child_form = self.get_child_form()

        # check if both forms are valid
        form_valid = form.is_valid()
        child_form_valid = child_form.is_valid()

        if form_valid and child_form_valid:
            return self.form_valid(form, child_form)
        else:
            return self.form_invalid(form)

    def form_valid(self, form, child_form):
        self.object = form.save()
        save_child_form = child_form.save(commit=False)
        save_child_form.course_key = self.object
        save_child_form.save()

        return HttpResponseRedirect(self.get_success_url())

Example Usage:

class ConsumerRegistrationUpdateView(UpdateView):
    model = Registration
    fields = ('firstname', 'lastname',)
    child_model = ConsumerProfile
    child_fields = ('payment_token', 'cart',)

Or with ModelFormClass:

class ConsumerRegistrationUpdateView(UpdateView):
    model = Registration
    fields = ('firstname', 'lastname',)
    child_model = ConsumerProfile
    child_form_class = ConsumerProfileForm

Done. Hope that helps someone.

You probably should take a look at Inline formsets. Inline formsets are used when your models are related by a foreign key.

You can check my answer here for a similar problem.

It talks about how to combine registration and user profile into one form, but it can be generalized to any ModelForm combination.

I used django betterforms‘s MultiForm and MultiModelForm in my project. The code can be improved, though. For example, it’s dependent on django.six, which isn’t supported by 3.+, but all of these can easily be fixed

This question has appeared several times in StackOverflow, so I think it’s time to find a standardized way of coping with this.

Take this very simple form for example:

class SearchForm(Form):
    q = forms.CharField(label='search')

This gets rendered in the template:

<input type="text" name="q" id="id_q" />

However, I want to add the placeholder attribute to this field with a value of Search so that the HTML would look something like:

<input type="text" name="q" id="id_q" placeholder="Search" />

Preferably I would like to pass the placeholder value in to CharField in the form class through a dictionary or something like:

q = forms.CharField(label='search', placeholder='Search')

What would be the best way to accomplish this?

Look at the widgets documentation. Basically it would look like:

q = forms.CharField(label='search', 
                    widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder': 'Search'}))

More writing, yes, but the separation allows for better abstraction of more complicated cases.

You can also declare a widgets attribute containing a <field name> => <widget instance> mapping directly on the Meta of your ModelForm sub-class.

For a ModelForm, you can use the Meta class thus:

from django import forms

from .models import MyModel

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        widgets = {
            'name': forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder': 'Name'}),
            'description': forms.Textarea(
                attrs={'placeholder': 'Enter description here'}),
        }

The other methods are all good. However, if you prefer to not specify the field (e.g. for some dynamic method), you can use this:

def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
    super(MyForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    self.fields['email'].widget.attrs['placeholder'] = self.fields['email'].label or 'email@address.nl'

It also allows the placeholder to depend on the instance for ModelForms with instance specified.

You can use this code to add placeholder attr for every TextInput field in you form. Text for placeholders will be taken from model field labels.

class PlaceholderDemoForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PlaceholderDemoForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        for field_name in self.fields:
            field = self.fields.get(field_name)  
            if field:
                if type(field.widget) in (forms.TextInput, forms.DateInput):
                    field.widget = forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder': field.label})

    class Meta:
        model = DemoModel

Great question. There are three solutions I know about:

Solution #1

Replace the default widget.

class SearchForm(forms.Form):  
    q = forms.CharField(
            label='Search',
            widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder': 'Search'})
        )

Solution #2

Customize the default widget. If you’re using the same widget that the field usually uses then you can simply customize that one instead of instantiating an entirely new one.

class SearchForm(forms.Form):  
    q = forms.CharField(label='Search')

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['q'].widget.attrs.update({'placeholder': 'Search'})

Solution #3

Finally, if you’re working with a model form then (in addition to the previous two solutions) you have the option to specify a custom widget for a field by setting the widgets attribute of the inner Meta class.

class CommentForm(forms.ModelForm):  
    class Meta:
        model = Comment
        widgets = {
            'body': forms.Textarea(attrs={'cols': 80, 'rows': 20})
        }

It’s undesirable to have to know how to instantiate a widget when you just want to override its placeholder.

    q = forms.CharField(label='search')
    ...
    q.widget.attrs['placeholder'] = "Search"

Most of the time I just wish to have all placeholders equal to the verbose name of the field defined in my models

I’ve added a mixin to easily do this to any form that I create,

class ProductForm(PlaceholderMixin, ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Product
        fields = ('name', 'description', 'location', 'store')

And

class PlaceholderMixin:
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        field_names = [field_name for field_name, _ in self.fields.items()]
        for field_name in field_names:
            field = self.fields.get(field_name)
            field.widget.attrs.update({'placeholder': field.label})

After looking at your method, I used this method to solve it.

class Register(forms.Form):
    username = forms.CharField(label='用户名', max_length=32)
    email = forms.EmailField(label='邮箱', max_length=64)
    password = forms.CharField(label="密码", min_length=6, max_length=16)
    captcha = forms.CharField(label="验证码", max_length=4)

def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
    super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    for field_name in self.fields:
        field = self.fields.get(field_name)
        self.fields[field_name].widget.attrs.update({
            "placeholder": field.label,
            'class': "input-control"
        })

Assume I have a form

class SampleClass(forms.Form):
    name = forms.CharField(max_length=30)
    age = forms.IntegerField()
    django_hacker = forms.BooleanField(required=False)

Is there a way for me to define css classes on each field such that I can then use jQuery based on class in my rendered page?

I was hoping not to have to manually build the form.

Yet another solution that doesn’t require changes in python code and so is better for designers and one-off presentational changes: django-widget-tweaks. Hope somebody will find it useful.

Answered my own question. Sigh

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/forms/widgets/#django.forms.Widget.attrs

I didn’t realize it was passed into the widget constructor.

Here is another solution for adding class definitions to the widgets after declaring the fields in the class.

def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
    super(SampleClass, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    self.fields['name'].widget.attrs['class'] = 'my_class'

Use django-widget-tweaks, it is easy to use and works pretty well.

Otherwise this can be done using a custom template filter.

Considering you render your form this way :

<form action="/contact/" method="post">
    {{ form.non_field_errors }}
    <div class="fieldWrapper">
        {{ form.subject.errors }}
        <label for="id_subject">Email subject:</label>
        {{ form.subject }}
    </div>
</form>

form.subject is an instance of BoundField which has the as_widget method.

you can create a custom filter “addcss” in “my_app/templatetags/myfilters.py”

from django import template

register = template.Library()

@register.filter(name='addcss')
def addcss(value, arg):
    css_classes = value.field.widget.attrs.get('class', '').split(' ')
    if css_classes and arg not in css_classes:
        css_classes = '%s %s' % (css_classes, arg)
    return value.as_widget(attrs={'class': css_classes})

And then apply your filter:

{% load myfilters %}
<form action="/contact/" method="post">
    {{ form.non_field_errors }}
    <div class="fieldWrapper">
        {{ form.subject.errors }}
        <label for="id_subject">Email subject:</label>
        {{ form.subject|addcss:'MyClass' }}
    </div>
</form>

form.subjects will then be rendered with the “MyClass” css class.

Hope this help.

EDIT 1

• Update filter according to dimyG‘s answer

• Add django-widget-tweak link

EDIT 2

• Update filter according to Bhyd‘s comment

Expanding on the method pointed to at docs.djangoproject.com:

class MyForm(forms.Form): 
    comment = forms.CharField(
            widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'size':'40'}))

I thought it was troublesome to have to know the native widget type for every field, and thought it funny to override the default just to put a class name on a form field. This seems to work for me:

class MyForm(forms.Form): 
    #This instantiates the field w/ the default widget
    comment = forms.CharField()

    #We only override the part we care about
    comment.widget.attrs['size'] = '40'

This seems a little cleaner to me.

If you want all the fields in the form to inherit a certain class, you just define a parent class, that inherits from forms.ModelForm, and then inherit from it

class BaseForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(BaseForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        for field_name, field in self.fields.items():
            field.widget.attrs['class'] = 'someClass'


class WhateverForm(BaseForm):
    class Meta:
        model = SomeModel

This helped me to add the 'form-control' class to all of the fields on all of the forms of my application automatically, without adding replication of code.

Here is Simple way to alter in view. add below in view just before passing it into template.

form = MyForm(instance = instance.obj)
form.fields['email'].widget.attrs = {'class':'here_class_name'}

Simply add the classes to your form as follows.

class UserLoginForm(forms.Form):
    username = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextInput(
        attrs={
        'class':'form-control',
        'placeholder':'Username'
        }
    ))
    password = forms.CharField(widget=forms.PasswordInput(
        attrs={
        'class':'form-control',
        'placeholder':'Password'
        }
    ))

Here is a variation on the above which will give all fields the same class (e.g. jquery nice rounded corners).

  # Simple way to assign css class to every field
  def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
    super(TranslatedPageForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    for myField in self.fields:
      self.fields[myField].widget.attrs['class'] = 'ui-state-default ui-corner-all'