Data from POST is being ignored by Django - django

Question

I'm having trouble with a form related issue where the data from a POST is clearly being sent back, but Django is stripping it out so that it won't go into my form class.
Here are some code snippets from my class's post() that show the data is being returned from the template and then how the data is not making it through the form class filtering.
Why is this happening?
What is the harm with me taking the data directly from the POST and not using the built-in form class filtering?
print(request.POST)
Yields this:
<QueryDict: {'book': ['Zippity do dah,'], 'weather': ["It's raining!"], 'dividend': ['Zippity aye!'], 'earnings': ['Yo man, one step at a time.'], 'csrfmiddlewaretoken': ['3MWFOwebVeYfCum8JaGvITRB542b3jbp']}>
and
main_form = self.main_form_class(request.POST)
print('\n','main_form: ',main_form)
Yields this:
main_form: <tr><th><label for="id_weather">weather:</label></th><td><input id="id_weather" maxlength="256" name="weather" size="36" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_book">book:</label></th><td><input id="id_book" maxlength="256" name="book" size="36" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_dividend">dividend:</label></th><td><input id="id_dividend" maxlength="256" name="dividend" size="36" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_earnings">earnings:</label></th><td><input id="id_earnings" maxlength="256" name="earnings" size="36" type="text" /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_csrfmiddlewaretoken">csrfmiddlewaretoken:</label></th><td><input id="id_csrfmiddlewaretoken" maxlength="256" name="csrfmiddlewaretoken" size="36" type="text" /></td></tr>
You can see that no 'values' are being included in main_form.
main_form.is_valid() is never True
main_form.cleaned_data throws an error - if I pull it out in front of main_form.is_valid()
Help!
OK - here is some more of the code:
I have a sub-class that has a form that is not returning data from a POST request. The super-class also has a form and this IS returning data from the same POST request. That is to say that the super-class is requesting user input and there are several sub-classes that extend the super-class and request other data. The super-class always returns the data from it's part of the form, but the subclasses do not.
The subclasses return data in the POST, but the data doesn't make it back to the Django view. This seems like a bug, (but perhaps it's a feature) or another likely scenario is that I'm missing something. However, I cannot find it.
A solution might be to have no super-class and just have a very non-DRY program. Yuck.
I've put in a few print() to terminal commands to look at what is coming back (or not coming back) to verify this.
I have also used my browser's Developer Tools to see that the POST does, in fact, have the necessary data in it that should be returned to the view for processing. However, this data does not make it back to the view.
The sub-class view code looks like this:
class MainView(SidebarBaseView):
main_form_class = MainViewForm
template_name = 'myapp/my_view.html'
def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
context = super(MainView, self).get(request, *args, **kwargs)
context.update(self.get_context_data(*args, **kwargs))
main_form_initial = {}
for detail in context['my_data']: # my_data comes from get_context_data()
field_name = detail.datatype.name
main_form_initial[field_name] = detail.note
main_form = self.main_form_class(initial=main_form_initial)
context['main_form'] = main_form
return render(request, self.template_name, context)
def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
context = super(MainView, self).post(request, *args, **kwargs)
context.update(self.get_context_data(*args, **kwargs))
main_form = self.main_form_class(request.POST)
print('\n','main_form',main_form,'\n') #to terminal
if main_form.is_valid():
main_form_data = main_form.cleaned_data
print('\n', 'cleaned data', main_form_data, '\n') #to terminal
for detail in context['my_data']:
field_name = detail.datatype.name
detail.note = main_form_data[field_name]
detail.save()
main_form_initial = {}
for detail in context['my_data']:
field_name = detail.datatype.name
main_form_initial[field_name] = detail.note
main_form = self.main_form_class(initial=main_form_initial)
context['main_form'] = main_form
return render(request, self.template_name, context)
def get_context_data(self, *args, **kwargs):
context = super(CompanyStatsView, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)
...
return context
My form make dynamic fields since I need to send it a variable number of fields eventually:
class MyMainViewForm(forms.Form):
fields = {}
field_names = ['weather','book','dividend','earnings']
def __init__(self, field_names, *args, **kwargs):
super(MyMainViewForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
for name in field_names:
self.fields[name] = forms.CharField(label=name, max_length=256, required=False, widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'size':'36'}))
My template looks like this:
{% extends 'my_sidebar.html' %}
{% block content_right %}
<div class="container-fluid">
<h2>Table</h2>
<div class="col-sm-4">
<div class="table-responsive">
<table class="table">
<tbody>
{% for detail in my_data %}
<tr height="50">
<td>{{ detail.datatype.full_name }}:</td>
<td class="text-right">{{ detail }}</td>
</tr>
{% endfor %}
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
<div class="col-sm-4">
<div class="table-responsive">
<table class="table">
<tbody>
<form action="." method="post"> {% csrf_token %}
{% for note in main_form %}
<tr height="50">
<td>{{ note }}</td>
</tr>
{% endfor %}
<p><input type="submit" value="Save"></p>
</form>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
<div class="col-sm-4">
</div>
</div>
{% endblock %}
Any ideas?
The pertinent part of urls.py is:
from django.conf.urls import url
from . import views
app_name = 'my_app'
urlpatterns = [
url(r'^(?P<slug>[A-Z]+)/data/$', views.MainView.as_view(), name='main-view',),
...
]