Django multi-form save - django

Question

I already tried nearly everything I could find regarding this, but I am pretty sure I am just one small suggestion away from solving my issue.
I am trying to save to forms that I generated using the forms method of Django at the same time. These forms have a ForeignKey relationship.
My model:
class Publisher(models.Model):
company = models.CharField(max_length=255)
address1 = models.CharField(max_length=255)
address2 = models.CharField(max_length=255)
city = models.CharField(max_length=255)
zipcode = models.CharField(max_length=10)
email = models.EmailField(max_length=255)
firstname = models.CharField(max_length=255)
lastname = models.CharField(max_length=255)
tc = models.BooleanField()
timestamp = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.company
class PublisherQuestions(models.Model):
referal = models.TextField()
updates = models.BooleanField()
publisher = models.ForeignKey(Publisher)
preferredCommunication = models.ForeignKey(PublisherCommunication)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.publisher
class PublisherForm(ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Publisher
class PublisherQuestionsForm(ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = PublisherQuestions
exclude = ('publisher')
and my view:
def register(request):
if request.method == 'POST':
form = PublisherForm(data = request.POST)
formQuestions = PublisherQuestionsForm(data = request.POST)
if form.is_valid() and formQuestions.is_valid():
publisher = form.save()
formQuestions.publisher = publisher
formQuestions.save()
return HttpResponseRedirect('/thanks/')
So, what I try to do, is to save the second form "formQuestions" with the foreign key publisher against the publisher_id from the PublisherForm.
Unfortunately MySQL / Django is giving me the following error.
Column 'publisher_id' cannot be null
This might be a complete newbie question and yes there has been many people asking nearly the same, but none of the solutions worked for me.
Thanks for your help, as always appreciated!

Answer 1

You can try the following to check whether you get the same error or not:
publisher = form.save()
questions = formQuestions.save(commit=False)
questions.publisher = publisher
questions.save()
With commit=False you get the Model without saving it to the database.
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/forms/modelforms/#the-save-method
In fact it is the Model you want to manipulate, adding the Publisher and not the form.
If you need to access the data from the form I think you should use for example this:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/forms/api/#accessing-clean-data
How I understood it is that you have a ModelForm and not a Model, so if you want to manipulate the Model you first need to create it, or at least it is the cleanest way of manipulating Model data. Otherwise you can manipulate the Form data but it is another story, you want to choose the raw data or the clean data etc.