How to intercept and control saving a Django POST form? - django

Question

When the user is required to fill his profile, he picks a city from the Google Places Autocomplete and posts the form, in the view I extract the city Id from the Google API based on the posted text (I use the same id as pk in my db) and try to extract a city from my db.
These are the models:
class City(models.Model):
#extracted from the Google API
city_id = models.CharField(primary_key=True, max_length=150)
name = models.CharField(max_length=128, blank=True)
country = models.CharField(max_length=128, blank=True)
class UserProfile(models.Model):
user = models.OneToOneField(User, related_name='profile', primary_key=True)
city = models.ForeignKey(City, blank=True, null=True)
prof_pic = models.ImageField(blank=True, upload_to='profile_pictures')
This is the view:
def createprofile(request):
if request.method =='POST':
user = User.objects.get(username=request.user.username)
user_form = UserForm(data=request.POST, instance=user)
profile_form = UserProfileForm(data=request.POST)
if user_form.is_valid() and profile_form.is_valid():
user = user_form.save()
user.save()
profile = profile_form.save(commit=False)
profile.user = user
#brings back the city search result as text
searched_city = request.POST['city']
#brings back city ID from the Google API
searched_city_id = population_script.get_city_json(searched_city.replace(" ", ""))['results'][0]['id']
#If it's a valid city
if searched_city_id != -1:
city = City.objects.get(city_id = searched_city_id)
profile.city = city#this is what I want to happen!
else:
return HttpResponse("There's no such city, please try a different query.")
if 'prof_pic' in request.FILES:#now save the profile pic
profile.prof_pic = request.FILES['prof_pic']
print("PROF PIC IS: " + profile.prof_pic.url)
else:
profile.prof_pic = 'images/anon.png'
profile.save()
if 'next' in request.GET:
return redirect(request.GET['next'])
else:
print (user_form.errors, profile_form.errors)
else:
user_form = UserForm()
profile_form = UserProfileForm()
return render(request,
'excurj/createprofile.html', {'user_form':user_form, 'profile_form':profile_form})
However, I keep receiving an error that what's been posted is just text while the city needs to be a City object. I can save the profile pic ok though.
Cannot assign "'Dubai - United Arab Emirates'": "UserProfile.city"
must be a "City" instance.
edit: these are the forms:
class UserForm(forms.ModelForm):
first_name = forms.CharField(
label = "First Name:",
max_length = 80,
required = True
)
last_name = forms.CharField(
label = "Last Name:",
max_length = 80,
required = True,
)
class Meta:
model = User
fields = ('first_name', 'last_name')
class UserProfileForm(forms.ModelForm):
city = forms.CharField(
label = "Your Current City:",
max_length = 200,
required = True,
)
class Meta:
model = UserProfile
fields = ('city','prof_pic', 'dob', 'sex', 'education', 'career', 'about_you',
'music_movies_books', )

Answer 1

Please provide a related_name to the city field in the UserProfile.

Answer 2

I worked around this by creating a new UserProfile field called city_search_text which saves the searched text thus it of course does not return any error. I then receive it in the POST request and comfortable pull the proper city in the view.

Answer 3

I handled a similar issue by overriding my forms' clean method. Something like the following will work:
def clean(self):
# fix city problem
if self.cleaned_data.get("city") is not None:
self.cleaned_data['city'] = City.objects.get(id=self.cleaned_data.get("city"))
return self.cleaned_data