how to make a char field behave like URLField in django - django

Question

I am using Django and I want a field for URLs I know there is a URLField in Django but I want that field to be a charfield and I don't want users to submit anything other than URL in that charfield
take a look at my models.py:
class Profile(models.Model):
user = models.OneToOneField(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
email = models.EmailField(max_length=500, blank=True, null=True)
social_github = models.CharField(max_length=200, blank=True, null=True)
social_twitter = models.CharField(max_length=200, blank=True, null=True)
social_linkedin = models.CharField(max_length=200, blank=True, null=True)
social_youtube = models.CharField(max_length=200, blank=True, null=True)
social_website = models.CharField(max_length=200, blank=True, null=True)
created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
id = models.UUIDField(
default=uuid.uuid4, unique=True, primary_key=True, editable=False)
def __str__(self):
return str(self.username)
Please answer how can I make a char field behave like a URL field

Answer 1

An URLField is in essence just a CharField with some validation (and a default name that defaults to (a translation of) URL and a maximum length of 200. Indeed if we look at the source code [GitHub], we see:
class URLField(CharField):
default_validators = [validators.URLValidator()]
description = _("URL")
def __init__(self, verbose_name=None, name=None, **kwargs):
kwargs.setdefault('max_length', 200)
super().__init__(verbose_name, name, **kwargs)
def deconstruct(self):
name, path, args, kwargs = super().deconstruct()
if kwargs.get("max_length") == 200:
del kwargs['max_length']
return name, path, args, kwargs
def formfield(self, **kwargs):
# As with CharField, this will cause URL validation to be performed
# twice.
return super().formfield(**{
'form_class': forms.URLField,
**kwargs,
})
It also uses a different form field: the URLField is [implemented [GitHub] as):
class URLField(CharField):
widget = URLInput
# …
It will thus use a URLInput widget, but there is nothing that prevents you from using another widget. Indeed, we can implement the model with:
class Profile(models.Model):
# …
social_github = models.URLField(blank=True, null=True)
social_twitter = models.URLField(blank=True, null=True)
social_linkedin = models.URLField(blank=True, null=True)
social_youtube = models.URLField(blank=True, null=True)
social_website = models.URLField(blank=True, null=True)
# …
If you want to change the widget, for example in a ModelForm, you can work with:
class MyProfileForm(forms.ModelForm):
# …
class Meta:
# …
widgets = {
'social_github': forms.TextInput,
'social_twitter': forms.TextInput,
'social_linkedin': forms.TextInput,
'social_youtube': forms.TextInput,
'social_website': forms.TextInput
}