Select a model instance from HTML form on Django - django

Question

I am trying to get my html form to allow me to pass the company model instance. As of now, I can pull the names of each company instance, however, what would I put into the value attibute of the option field to have it select the instance correctly?
<option value="what to put here?">{{Company.name}}</option>
I was hoping to do this through HTML forms and not Django forms as I have used AJAX to make a nice little live-updating interface.
models.py
class Company(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=30, null=True, blank=True)
email = models.CharField(max_length=40, null=True, blank=True)
phone = models.CharField(max_length=15, null=True, blank=True)
address = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True, blank=True)
notes = models.CharField(max_length=400, null=True, blank=True)
created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True, blank=True)
updated = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True, blank=True)
class Meta:
ordering = ["name"]
def __str__(self):
return self.name
class Contact(models.Model):
firstname = models.CharField(max_length=20, null=True, blank=True)
lastname = models.CharField(max_length=20, null=True, blank=True)
email = models.CharField(max_length=40, null=True, blank=True)
phone = models.CharField(max_length=15, null=True, blank=True)
title = models.CharField(max_length=20, null=True, blank=True)
notes = models.CharField(max_length=400, null=True, blank=True)
company = models.ForeignKey(Company, on_delete=models.CASCADE, null=True, blank=True)
created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
updated = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
class Meta:
ordering = ["lastname"]
def __str__(self):
return self.firstname
views.py
class contact_manager(ListView):
template_name = 'crm/contact_manager.html'
context_object_name = 'contact_manager'
queryset = Contact.objects.all()
def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
context = super(contact_manager, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)
context['contact'] = Contact.objects.all()
context['company_list'] = Company.objects.all()
# And so on for more models
return context
contact_manager.html
<div class="form-group">
<select class="form-control" name="company" placeholder="Company">
<option value="">Please select a company</option>
{% for Company in company_list %}
<option value="{{Company.name}}">{{Company.name}}</option>
{% endfor %}
</select>
</div>

Answer 1

If you are looking for a unqiue identifier for each option, that links to a model instance on the backend, that is what the ID field is for (Company.id):
<option value="{{ Company.id }}">{{Company.name}}</option>
Then on the backend you can retrieve the model with the posted id:
Company.get(id=posted_id)
Note: id is by default added to your model as the primary key and is a auto incrememting integer.