I have a model and a form like this:
class MyModel(models.Model):
param = models.CharField()
param1 = models.CharField()
param2 = models.CharField()
class MyForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = MyModel
fields = ('param', 'param1', 'param2')
Then I have one drop down menu with different values and based on what value is selected I'm hiding and showing fields of MyForm. Now I have to take one step further and render param2 as a CheckboxInput widget if user selects a certain value from a drop down but in other cases it should be standard text field. So how would I do that?
I know this post is almost a year old, but it took me multiple hours to even find a post related to this topic (this is the only one I found, which came up as related when submitting my own question), so I felt the need to share my solution.
I wanted to have a form that would show and require a text field if an option from a dropdown menu matched a value stored in another model. I had a foreignKey relation between two models and I passed an instance of Model1 into the ModelForm for Model2. If a value chosen for a variable in Model2 matched a variable already set in Model1, I wanted to show and require a textfield. It was basically a "choose Other and then enter your own description" scenario.
I did not want the page to reload (I was trying to have this work in both mobile and desktop browsers with the least delay/reloads and using the same code for both), so I could not use the mentioned multiple forms loading in a view option. I started trying to do it with AJAX as suggested above when I realized I was over thinking the problem.
The answer was using JS and clean methods in the form. I added a non-required field (field1) that was not in Model2 to my Model2Form. I then hid this using jQuery and only displayed it (using jQuery) if the value of another field (field2) matched the value of the variable from Model1. To make that work, I did decide to have a hidden < span > in my template with the pk of the variable so I could easily grab it with jQuery. This jQuery worked perfectly for hiding and showing the field correctly so the user could choose the "other" value and then decided to choose a different one instead (and go back and forth endlessly).
I then used a clean method in my Model2Form for field1 that raised a ValidationError if no value was entered when the value in field2 matched my Model1 variable. I accessed that variable by using "self.other = Model1.variable" in my __ init __ method and then referencing that in the clean_field1 method.
I would have liked to have been able to accomplish this without having to hide and show a field with JS, but I think the only solutions for doing so with views or ajax caused delays/reloads that I did not want. Also, I liked the general simplicity of the method I used, rather than having to figure out how to pass partial forms back and forth through the HTTPRequest.
Update:
In my situation, I was creating entries for lost and found items and if the location where the item was found was not a provided option, then I wanted to show a textbox for the user to enter the location. I created a location object that was set as the "other" location and then displayed the textbox when that object was selected as the "found" location.
In forms.py, I added an extra CharField and use a clean method to check if the field is required and then throw a ValidationError if it wasn't filled in:
class Model2Form(forms.ModelForm):
def __init__(self, Model1, *args, **kwargs):
self.other = Model1.otherLocation
super(Model2Form, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
...
otherLocation = forms.CharField(
label="Location Description",
max_length=255,
required=False
)
def clean_otherLocation(self):
if self.cleaned_data['locationFound'] == self.other and not self.cleaned_data['otherLocation']:
raise ValidationError("Must describe the location.")
return self.cleaned_data['otherLocation']
Then in my JavaScript, I checked if the value of the "found" location was the "other" location (the value of which I had in a hidden span on my html page). I then used .show() and .hide() on the textbox's parent element as necessary:
$("#id_locationFound").change( function(){
if ($("#id_locationFound").val() == $("#otherLocation").attr("value")){ //if matches "other" location, display textbox; otherwise, hide textbox
$("#id_otherLocation").parent().show();
}else
$("#id_otherLocation").parent().hide();
});
Your best guess would be to trigger a "POST" request when you select something from your drop down menu.
The Value of that "POST" has to correspond your values you use to determine which field you would like to output.
Now you will actually need two forms:
class MyBaseForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = MyModel
fields = ('param', 'param1', 'param2')
class MyDropDownForm(MyBaseForm):
class Meta:
widgets = {
'param2': Select(attrs={...}),
}
So as you can see the DropDownForm has been derived from MyBaseForm to make sure it will have all the same properties. But we have modified the widget of one of the fields.
Now you can update your view. Please note, this is untested Python + Pseudocode
views.py
def myFormView(request):
if request.method == 'POST': # If the form has been submitted...
form = MyBaseForm(request.POST)
#submit button has not been pressed, so the dropdown has triggered the submission.
#Hence we won't safe the form, but reload it
if 'my_real_submitbotton' not in form.data:
if 'param1' == "Dropdown":
form = MyDropDownForm(request.POST)
else:
#do your normal form saving procedure
else:
form = ContactForm() # An unbound form
return render(request, 'yourTemplate.html', {
'form': form,
})
This mechanism does the following:
When the form is submitted it checks if you have pressed the "submit" button or have used a dropdown onChange to trigger a submission. My solution doesn't contain the javascript code you need to trigger the submission with an onChange. I just like to provide a way to solve it.
To use the 'my_real_submitbutton' in form.data construct you will be required to name your submit button:
<input type="submit" name="my_real_submitbutton" value="Submit" />
Of course you can choose any string as Name. :-)
In case of a submit by your dropdown field you must check which value has been selected in this drop down menu. If this value satisfies the condition you want to return a Dropdown Menu you create an instance of DropDownForm(request.POST) otherwise you can leave everything as it is and rerender your template.
On the downside this will refresh your page.
On the upside it will keep all the already entered field values. So no harm done here.
If you would like to avoid the page refresh you can keep my proposed idea but you need to render the new form via AJAX.
Related
I have standard Django models with ForeignKey.
Django docs:
"ForeignKey is represented by django.forms.ModelChoiceField, which is a ChoiceField whose choices are a model QuerySet."
and
"If the model field has choices set, then the form field’s widget will be set to Select, with choices coming from the model field’s choices."
Now I have dropdown menu with choices.
I don't want dropdown menu where user can see options. I want CharField(textfield or similar) where user type, but still
that must be one of the options from the database for that field. He must type a valid entry.
I tried:
class TransakcijeForm(forms.ModelForm):
model = models.Transakcije
fields = .....
labels = .....
widgets ={'subscriber':forms.TextInput()}
but I receive the message:
"Select a valid choice. That choice is not one of the available choices."
(entry is correct and it works with dropdown menu)
This is my first question here and I'm sorry if I miss the form.
The reason you are getting that error is because your form is still treating the subscriber field as a ModelChoiceField because you are only overriding what widget is rendered to html. You need to change the actual field type of your field. You can define your form like this:
from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError
class TransakcijeForm(forms.ModelForm):
subscriber = forms.CharField()
class Meta:
model = models.Transakcije
fields = ....
labels = ....
def clean_subscriber(self):
subscriber_id = self.cleaned_data['subscriber']
try:
# adjust this line to appropriately get the model object that you need
subscriber = SubscriberModel.objects.get(id=subscriber_id)
return subscriber
except:
raise ValidationError('Subscriber does not exist')
The line subscriber = forms.CharField() will change the form to treat the field as a CharField rather than a ModelChoiceField. Doing this will cause the form to return the subscriber field value as a string, so you will need to get the appropriate model object based on the value of the field. That is what the clean_subscriber(self) function is for. It needs to be named like clean_<field name>(). That function will take the string that is returned by the form, try and find the correct model object and return it if an object is found. If it finds no matching objects it will raise a ValidationError so the form doesn't submit with a bad value.
I have a blog and would like to add a post_type variable which will be a dropdown on the webpage.
I have added post_type to my Post model as a Charfield. And setup the dropdown in the template. (this might not be the best way to do this)
It works when I'm creating a Post and also when I edit the post, if I change the dropdown value, the new value is saved. The problem I'm having is when I'm editing a post, I can't get the value to be selected in the dropdown.
I think the html tag for the value in the dropdown needed to be market as Selected but I cant figure out how to do this. I'd really appreciate the help if someone can point me in the right direction.
The most simple way will be add list of choice to your charfield in the model.
model.py
class BlogPost(models.Model):
POST_TYPE_CHOICES = (
('cooking', 'Cooking'),
('story','Amazing Stories'),
)
#other fields here
post_type = models.CharField(choices=POST_TYPE_CHOICES, max_length=50)
Then if you create a ModelForm using this model the default layout in the template will be a dropdownlist.
from the doc :
choices
Field.choices
An iterable (e.g., a list or tuple) consisting itself of iterables of
exactly two items (e.g. [(A, B), (A, B) ...]) to use as choices for
this field. If choices are given, they’re enforced by model validation
and the default form widget will be a select box with these choices
instead of the standard text field.
EDITED the 20/02:
You need to pass the instance inside your view (I assume you are not using classbased view).
So you should have some thing like this:
def edit_post(request, post_id):
#try to get the instance of the post you need to edit
post_instance = get_object_or_404(Post, id = post_id)
#get your form and pass it the current Post instance
form = EditPostForm(request.POST or None, instance=post_instance)
#validate your form
if form.is_valid():
#if using ModelForm the database will be saved as well
form.save()
#then render your template with the form
return render(request, "edit_post.html", {'form': form})
Then you should use the {{form.field_name}} notation in your template and see the curent value with the dropdown without problem.
I'm trying to create a FormSet in which the first Form has an extra check to determine if it should be taken into account or not. The object is pretty simply:
class Entry(models.Model):
customer = models.ForeignKey('Customer')
description = models.CharField(max_length=512)
start_time = models.TimeField('start time')
I have multiple of these objects as Form in a FormSet. However, I set the start_time and the customer field with some javascript in the page. Now, when I change one of the other Entry Forms, I get a validation error on the empty one. Is there a way to check in the validation of the code if the form has an object associated with it and the description field is empty, that the set should just ignore this form?
I've tried overriding the clean() method of the Form, but I cannot find how to check the actual description field from there. Also, if I do find that this Form object should be ignored, how do I mark the form as 'ignore me'?
Or should I be doing this from the FormSet itself? If so, the self.forms is an immutable QueryDict, so it looks like I shouldn't modify that one. How else to mark one of the Forms as 'ignore it'?
Any hints are appreciated!
I understand that, by default, Django auto-populates id for each form field upon rendering with the format id_for_%s. One can modify the format by providing the auto_id argument with a different format as its value to the Form constructor.
That's not exactly what I am looking for, however. What I want to accomplish is changing the id of just one of the many fields in my form. Also, the solution should not break the use of form = MyForm(request.POST).
PS. MyForm is a model form, so each id is derived from its corresponding Model field.
Thanks for helping out.
The forms framework appears to generate labels here:
def _id_for_label(self):
"""
Wrapper around the field widget's `id_for_label` class method.
Useful, for example, for focusing on this field regardless of whether
it has a single widget or a MutiWidget.
"""
widget = self.field.widget
id_ = widget.attrs.get('id') or self.auto_id
return widget.id_for_label(id_)
id_for_label = property(_id_for_label)
Which means you can just supply your field widget with an "id" key to set it to whatever you'd like.
foo = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'id': 'foobar'}))
Or override init and set the attrs after form initialization.
I don't see how this could break a form as django's forms framework isn't ever aware of HTML ids (that data is not passed to the server...)
For my project I need many "workflow" forms. I explain myself:
The user selects a value in the first field, validates the form and new fields appear depending on the first field value. Then, depending on the others fields, new fields can appear...
How can I implement that in a generic way ?
I think the solution you are looking for is django form wizard
Basically you define separate forms for different pages and customize the next ones based on input in previous screens, at the end, you get all form's data together.
Specifically look at the process step advanced option on the form wizard.
FormWizard.process_step()
"""
Hook for modifying the wizard's internal state, given a fully validated Form object. The Form is guaranteed to have clean, valid data.
This method should not modify any of that data. Rather, it might want to set self.extra_context or dynamically alter self.form_list, based on previously submitted forms.
Note that this method is called every time a page is rendered for all submitted steps.
The function signature:
"""
def process_step(self, request, form, step):
# ...
If you need to only modify the dropdown values based on other dropdowns within the same form, you should have a look at the implemented dajaxproject
I think it depends on the scale of the problem.
You could write some generic JavaScript that shows and hides the form fields (then in the form itself you apply these css classes). This would work well for a relatively small number showing and hiding fields.
If you want to go further than that you will need to think about developing dynamic forms in Django. I would suggest you don't modify the ['field'] in the class like Ghislain suggested. There is a good post here about dynamic forms and it shows you a few approaches.
I would imagine that a good solution might be combining the dynamic forms in the post above with the django FormWizard. The FormWizard will take you through various different Forms and then allow you to save the overall data at the end.
It had a few gotchas though as you can't easily go back a step without loosing the data of the step your on. Also displaying all the forms will require a bit of a customization of the FormWizard. Some of the API isn't documented or considered public (so be wary of it changing in future versions of Django) but if you look at the source you can extend and override parts of the form wizard fairly easily to do what you need.
Finally a simpler FormWizard approach would be to have say 5 static forms and then customize the form selection in the wizard and change what forms are next and only show the relevant forms. This again would work well but it depends how much the forms change on previous choices.
Hope that helps, ask any questions if have any!
It sounds like you want an AJAXy type solution. Checkout the Taconite plugin for jQuery. I use this for populating pulldowns, etc. on forms. Works very nicely.
As for being "generic" ... you might have standard methods on your container classes that return lists of children and then have a template fragmen t that knows how to format that in some 'standard' way.
Ok, I've found a solution that does not use ajax at all and seems nice enough to me :
Create as many forms as needed and make them subclass each other. Put an Integer Hidden Field into the first one :
class Form1(forms.Form):
_nextstep = forms.IntegerField(initial = 0, widget = forms.HiddenInput())
foo11 = forms.IntegerField(label = u'First field of the first form')
foo12 = forms.IntegerField(label = u'Second field of the first form')
class Form2(Form1):
foo21 = forms.CharField(label = u'First field of the second form')
class Form3(Form2):
foo31 = forms.ChoiceField([],
label=u'A choice field which choices will be completed\
depending on the previous forms')
foo32 = forms.IntegerField(label = u'A last one')
# You can alter your fields depending on the data.
# Example follows for the foo31 choice field
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
if self.data and self.data.has_key('foo12'):
self.fields['foo31'].choices = ['make','a','nice','list',
'and you can','use your models']
Ok, that was for the forms now here is the view :
def myview(request):
errors = []
# define the forms used :
steps = [Form1,Form2,Form3]
if request.method != 'POST':
# The first call will use the first form :
form = steps[0]()
else:
step = 0
if request.POST.has_key('_nextstep'):
step = int(request.POST['_nextstep'])
# Fetch the form class corresponding to this step
# and instantiate the form
klass = steps[step]
form = klass(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
# If the form is valid, increment the step
# and use the new class to create the form
# that will be displayed
data = form.cleaned_data
data['_nextstep'] = min(step + 1, len(steps) - 1)
klass = steps[data['_nextstep']]
form = klass(data)
else:
errors.append(form.errors)
return render_to_response(
'template.html',
{'form':form,'errors':errors},
context_instance = RequestContext(request))
The only problem I saw is that if you use {{form}} in your template, it calls form.errors and so automagically validates the new form (Form2 for example) with the data of the previous one (Form1). So what I do is iterate over the items in the form and only use {{item.id}}, {{item.label}} and {{item}}. As I've already fetched the errors of the previous form in the view and passed this to the template, I add a div to display them on top of the page.