django form not submitting when rendering specific fields in template - django

Question

I have an UpdateUserForm:
class UserUpdateForm(UserChangeForm):
email = forms.EmailField()
first_name = forms.CharField(max_length=100)
last_name = forms.CharField(max_length=100)
username = forms.CharField(max_length=100, widget=forms.TextInput())
last_login = forms.CharField(max_length=100, widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'type': 'hidden'}))
is_superuser = forms.CharField(max_length=100, widget=forms.CheckboxInput(attrs={'type': 'hidden'}))
is_staff = forms.CharField(max_length=100, widget=forms.CheckboxInput(attrs={'type': 'hidden'}))
is_active = forms.CharField(max_length=100, widget=forms.CheckboxInput(attrs={'type': 'hidden'}))
date_joined = forms.CharField(max_length=100, widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'type': 'hidden'}))
class Meta:
model = User
fields = ('username', 'first_name', 'last_name', 'email', 'last_login', 'date_joined')
def update_user_notification(self):
email = self.cleaned_data['email']
username = self.cleaned_data['username']
if self.is_valid():
update_user_notification_task.delay(email, username)
and a UserUpdate view:
class UserUpdate(generic.UpdateView):
model = User
form_class = UserUpdateForm
template_name = 'accounts/update_user.html'
def get_object(self):
return self.request.user
def form_valid(self, form):
instance = form.save()
form.update_user_notification()
return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('user_detail', args=[str(instance.pk)]))
I originally wrote this form in the template as {{form.as_p}} and it worked, but there were some things I wanted to fix:
<h1>Update Information...</h1>
<form method="POST">
{% csrf_token %}
{{form.as_p}}
<button>UPDATE</button>
</form>
<br></br>
Back
Home
{% endblock %}
Rendered as this:
I wanted to get rid of those password related things at the bottom so I changed my form to:
<form method="POST">
{% csrf_token %}
<p><label>{{form.email.label}}: </label>{{form.email}}</p>
<p><label>{{form.username.label}}: </label>{{form.username}}</p>
<p><label>{{form.first_name.label}}: </label>{{form.first_name}}</p>
<p><label>{{form.last_name.label}}: </label>{{form.last_name}}</p>
<button>UPDATE</button>
</form>
This worked on the frontend, but now my form isn't submitting. When I click update, the page looks as if it's loading, but my database doesn't updating and my celery task isn't run. What's the issue?
Do I need to have all the fields in order to submit the form? Is there a way to just exclude the password related fields? And is that a better option?

Answer 1

The answer was actually really simple. I added {{form.errors}} to see if any errors were occurring in the actual form, since there were no errors in my network tab.
Turns out that last_login and date_joined are both required in order to POST the form. Once I added them in:
<form method="POST">
{% csrf_token %}
<p><label>{{form.email.label}}: </label>{{form.email}}</p>
<p><label>{{form.username.label}}: </label>{{form.username}}</p>
<p><label>{{form.first_name.label}}: </label>{{form.first_name}}</p>
<p><label>{{form.last_name.label}}: </label>{{form.last_name}}</p>
<p>{{form.last_login}}</p>
<p>{{form.date_joined}}</p>
<button>UPDATE</button>
</form>
The form was able to submit and update the database. I left out the label because those forms for me are attrs={'type': 'hidden'} anyway. Although this brings up another question as to why are these fields required to submit? Is there a way to just not require them and save the trouble of hiding them?