Django form error message showing despite selecting something from dropdown - django

Question

I have a Django model which is:
class Account(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=50, blank=True)
number = models.CharField(max_length=16, blank=True)
I'd like to create a form where user can select an existing account's phone number from a dropdown list. So in forms.py, I have:
class AccountSelectForm(forms.Form):
phone_num_err_msgs = {'required': "You must select a phone number to send this message."}
phone_number = forms.CharField(required=True, error_messages=phone_num_err_msgs)
selected_group_ids = forms.CharField(required=True, widget=forms.HiddenInput)
launch_datetime = forms.CharField(required=True)
In views.py, I have:
class AccountSelectView(LoginRequiredMixin, FormView):
template_name = 'campaigns/send.html'
form_class = AccountSelectForm
success_url = reverse_lazy('campaigns:taskq_list')
def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
data = super(AccountSelectView, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)
data['groups'] = Group.objects.all()
data['campaign'] = Campaign.objects.get(id=self.request.GET['cam_id'])
data['accounts'] = Account.objects.all()
return data
def form_valid(self, form):
# If we insert pdb, we never reach here
#import pdb
#pdb.set_trace()
data = form.cleaned_data
campaign_id = self.request.GET['cam_id']
# ... do other form validation stuff here
return super(ConversationSendView, self).form_valid(form)
In send.html, I have:
<form action="" method="post">
{% csrf_token %}
<!-- A couple of other fields to collect user input -->
<div class="form-group">
<p><b>Step 3: Select aphone number to send the message FROM:</b></p>
{{ form.phone_number.errors }}
<select id="phone" style="width: 380px;">
<option value="">--------</option>
{% for a in accounts %}
<option value="{{ a.id }}">{{ a.number }}</option>
{% endfor %}
</select>
<div class="page-btns">
<input type="submit" class="btn btn-primary" value="Send Message to Selected Group(s)" />
</div>
</form>
But despite selecting the entry from the dropdown list (and all other required forms) before submitting, I keep seeing the phone_num_err_msgs on the HTML page [please see the screenshot here].
Is there something that I'm missing? Where (which file) can I import pdb and see why it is returning an error? I'm new to Django, so this is very likely a silly mistake/overlook. Thanks in advanced for the answers!

Answer 1

There are a few things wrong here. The immediate cause is that you are missing name="phone_number " in your select tag, so the browser is not sending any data for that element.
But it is not clear why you are constructing that element manually anyway. Rather than defining a CharField and ignoring it, you should be using a ModelChoiceField, which will automatically give you a select box with all the accounts in.
class AccountSelectForm(forms.Form):
...
phone_number = forms. ModelChoiceField(queryset=Account.objects.all())
...
{{ form.phone_number.errors }}
{{ form.phone_number }}