Retrieve selected choices from Django form ChoiceField - django

Question

I'm attempting to make a search functionality on my Django web app. The idea is that users will go to the front page and be able to select from a drop down list of properties (ie. the OS, compiler, etc) and then submit their search which should return a list of matching builds. I have the ChoiceField form set up and I know the code I need to run to get the proper build in my next view. What I don't know is how to pass the values the user selected when they hit submit to the next view so I can filter based on those choices. Any help?
forms.py
from .models import *
class BuildForm(forms.Form):
build_OPTIONS = Builds.objects.values().distinct()
...
Build_type = forms.ChoiceField(widget=forms.Select(), choices=build_OPTIONS)
views.py
from .forms import BuildForm
def index(request):
builds = BuildForm()
return render(request, 'ReportGenerator/index.html',
{"builds":builds})
templates/App/index.html
{% if builds %}
<h2>Pick a Build</h2>
<form method="POST" class="build-form">{% csrf_token %}
{{ builds.as_p }}
</form>
{% else %}
<p>No reports are available.</p>
{% endif %}

Answer 1

For your build_OPTIONS that you use as choices, it would probably be best to define them inside the model like this. And then you can reference them in your form class like so:
models.py
class Builds(models.Model):
CHOICE1 = "Choice 1"
CHOICE2 = "Choice 2"
BUILD_OPTIONS_CHOICES = (
(CHOICE1, 'Choice 1'),
(CHOICE2, 'Choice 2'),
(<value>, <human readable name>),
)
...fields...
forms.py
from .models import *
class BuildForm(forms.Form):
...
Build_type = forms.ChoiceField(widget=forms.Select(), choices=Builds.BUILD_OPTIONS_CHOICES)
Here's an example for the view. If form.is_valid() returns True then you can access the form values in form.cleaned_data['my_form_field_name']
views.py
def index(request):
# if this is a POST request we need to process the form data
if request.method == 'POST':
# create a form instance and populate it with data from the request:
form = BuildForm(request.POST)
# check whether it's valid:
if form.is_valid():
# can access the form data in cleaned_data['form_field_name']
print form.cleaned_data['build_type']
# redirect to a new URL:
return HttpResponseRedirect('/')
# if a GET (or any other method) we'll create a blank form
else:
form = BuildForm()
return render(request, 'index.html', {'form': form})
As for the form field name, it's probably build_options and build_type. Usually it uses whatever the variable name is in the form class. To make life easier, I would standardize on all lowercase characters with underscores for the variable names, capitalized first letters for class names, all uppercase for constants, etc. For more information see this page where it describes how as_p() works.