Django - Dynamically importing a models form - django

Question

I want to create a view that is able to show a ModelForm for various different models. It does this by obtaining the content type of the model and then dynamically instantiating the model form associated with that particular model. Here is my model:
from django.db import models
class SomeModel(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=150)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
And inside the same app there is a forms.py with the following form:
from django.forms import ModelForm
from someapp.models import SomeModel
class SomeModelForm(ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = SomeModel
fields = ('name',)
So what I want to do inside of my view file is return the correct form for each model dynamically. I tried the following:
from django.db import models
from someapp.forms import SomeModelForm
class SomeModel(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=150)
form = SomeModelForm
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name
But it doesn't work because of the obvious circular import. Does anyone have any idea how I might go about achieving this? I tried toying with modelform_factory, but it seems to ignore any of my custom model forms in forms.py.
EDIT: I should of mentioned that I won't have an instance of the model, just the model class itself, so having a method that inside of the model doesn't work (it does, however, work if you are calling it on an instance of the model)

Answer 1

You could get around the circular import by importing your model form inside a method.
class SomeModel(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=150)
#staticmethod
def get_form_class():
from someapp.forms import SomeModelForm
return SomeModelForm
# in your view:
SomeModel.get_form_class()

Answer 2

Putting the import within a method on the model should be enough to get you around the circular import, so instead of what you have, you'd use:
class SomeModel(models.Model):
...
def get_form(self):
from someapp.forms import SomeModelForm
return SomeModelForm
You can even make it a property if you want with:
form = property(get_form)

Answer 3

There is a built-in func get_model for lazy importing models.
from django.db.models import get_model
SomeModel = get_model('your_app_name', 'SomeModel')

Answer 4

Using __import__ and getattr.
# models.py
class SomeModel(models.Model):
...
#classmethod
def get_form(cls):
try:
app = __import__(cls._meta.app_label)
forms = getattr(app, "forms")
return getattr(forms, "%sForm" % cls.__name__)
except:
return None
# forms.py
class SomeModelForm(forms.Form):
...
in a view you can get the form associate to a models like this:
# views.p
from models import SomeModel
...
def myview(request):
form = SomeModel.getform()