Receive data from Django front end form - django

Question

what I am trying to do:
I am trying to get data from Django frontend table, and post it back to frontend.
I am not using modelForm, I thought I don't need save the data to database.
My code:
in views.py:
def panelThree(request):
startDate = ''
endDate = ''
byOtherField = ''
if request.method == 'POST':
form = QueryForm(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
startDate = request.POST.get('date')
endDate = request.POST.get('date1')
byOtherField = request.POST.get('date2')
else:
form = QueryForm()
# if not byOtherField:
dataTable = Production.objects.order_by('-id')
return render(request, 'frontend/panelThree.html', {
'form': form, 'dataTable': dataTable, 'startDate':startDate
})
frontend_form:
<form method="post">
{% csrf_token %}
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-8">
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4">
<label >
TextField1
</label>
<input class="form-control" id="date" name="date" placeholder="MM/DD/YYYY" type="text"/>
<p> >> Start Date </p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-4">
<label class="control-label " for="date1">
TextField2
</label>
<input class="form-control" id="date1" name="date1" placeholder="MM/DD/YYYY" type="text"/>
<p> >> End Date </p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-4">
<label class="control-label " >
Or
</label>
<label class="control-label " for="date2">
TextField3
</label>
<input class="form-control" id="date2" name="date2" placeholder="MM/DD/YYYY" type="text"/>
<p> >> By Other Field </p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="col-md-4">
<div class="button-box">
<button class="btn btn-primary " name="submit" type="submit"> Search </button>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</form>
My error:
there is no error, but I just cannot get value from the form post to 'startDate'. It always shows blank value.
I appreciate the help to address this issue, or any ways to work around. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

2 problems here.
1) The fields in the html are named incorrectly.
<input class="form-control" id="date" name="date" placeholder="MM/DD/YYYY" type="text"/>
The name field here should be set to startDate, and so should the id field.
2) You're grabbing data directly from POST.
After verifying the form is_valid, you should get data from it like this:
startDate = form.cleaned_data['startDate']

Answer 2

By removing the "if form.is_valid()" statement, and changing back to request.POST.get method, it's working
def panelThree(request):
startDate = ''
endDate = ''
byOtherField = ''
if request.method == 'POST':
form = QueryForm(request.POST)
startDate = request.POST.get('startDate')
endDate = request.POST.get('endDate')
byOtherField = request.POST.get('byOtherField')
else:
form = QueryForm()
# if not byOtherField:
dataTable = Production.objects.order_by('-id')
return render(request, 'frontend/panelThree.html', {
'form': form, 'dataTable': dataTable, 'startDate':startDate
})