How to create and process a form with multiple same fields? - django

Question

I'm really stuck with this. To show my problem I created a new Django project and started from scratch, focusing only on one single form.
What I'm trying to do is to create a form with several fields of the same name. I tried using modelformset_factory to achieve this but it looks to me like it's not what I really need.
Below is my code (also on dpaste) which currently works fine with one single field called name. How can I create and process a form which would have several name fields? Could somebody point me in the right direction?
# models.py
class Category(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=30, unique=True)
user = models.ForeignKey(User, blank=True, null=True)
class Meta:
verbose_name_plural = "Ingredience Categories"
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
# forms.py
class CategoryForm(ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Category
fields = ('name',)
# views.py
def home(request):
if request.method == 'POST':
catform = CategoryForm(request.POST)
catformInstance = catform.save(commit = False)
catformInstance.save()
return HttpResponseRedirect('')
else:
catform = CategoryForm()
context = {'catform': catform}
return render_to_response('home.html', context, context_instance=RequestContext(request))
# home.html template
<h3>Insert new Category</h3>
<form action="/" method="post" id="ingr-cat-form">{% csrf_token %}
{{ catform.as_p }}
<input type="submit" name="ingrCatForm" value="Save" />
</form>
UPDATE: to clarify, I want to allow user to insert several categories within one form. I think I'm getting close, here is my new version of views.py but it still stores just one category (the last one in the list):
def home(request):
if request.method == 'POST':
catform = CategoryForm(request.POST)
names = request.POST.getlist('name')
catformInstance = catform.save(commit = False)
for name in names:
catformInstance.name = name
catformInstance.save()
return HttpResponseRedirect('')
else:
catform = CategoryForm()
context = {'catform': catform}
return render_to_response('home.html', context, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Answer 1

You cannot have fields with the same name (on the same Model). If you only need to change the html label in the html form, use
class Category(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=30, unique=True)
name2 = models.CharField(max_length=30, unique=True, verbose_name="name")
user = models.ForeignKey(User, blank=True, null=True)
or
class CategoryForm(ModelForm):
def __init__(self , *args, **kwargs):
super(CategoryForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
self.fields['name2'].label = "name"

Answer 2

Here is a working solution. Thanks to #YardenST for pointing me in the right direction. I managed to solve my initial problem by following this tutorial.
# models.py
class Category(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=30, unique=True)
user = models.ForeignKey(User, blank=True, null=True)
class Meta:
verbose_name_plural = "Ingredience Categories"
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
# forms.py
class CategoryForm(ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Category
fields = ('name',)
# views.py
def home(request):
if request.method == 'POST':
catforms = [CategoryForm(request.POST, prefix=str(x), instance=Category()) for x in range(0,3)]
if all([cf.is_valid() for cf in catforms]):
for cf in catforms:
catformInstance = cf.save(commit = False)
catformInstance.save()
return HttpResponseRedirect('')
else:
catform = [CategoryForm(prefix=str(x), instance=Category()) for x in range(0,3)]
context = {'catform': catform}
return render_to_response('home.html', context, context_instance=RequestContext(request))
# home.html template
<h3>Insert new Category</h3>
<form action="/" method="post" id="ingr-cat-form">{% csrf_token %}
{% for catform_instance in catform %} {{ catform_instance.as_p }} {% endfor %}
<input type="submit" name="ingrCatForm" value="Save" />
</form>