Daniel Roy Greenfeld

Daniel Roy Greenfeld

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Adding Django form instance attributes

Sometimes in the clean(), clean_FOO or save() methods of a Django form, you need to have additional form instance attributes available. A sample case for this is having user_id available. This is a simple example of how to do it in Class-Based Views.

Assuming this form:

from django import forms

from .models import MyModel


class MyForm(forms.ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        model = MyModel

    def __init__(self, user_id, *args, **kwargs):
        super(MyForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        # set the user_id as an attribute of the form
        self.user_id = user_id

Now that the form is defined, the view needs to inject the form with the user id:

from django.views.generic import UpdateView

# this assumes that django-braces is installed
from braces.views import LoginRequiredMixin

from .forms import MyForm
from .models import MyModel


class MyUpdateView(LoginRequiredMixin, UpdateView):
    model = MyModel
    form_class = MyForm
    success_url = "/someplace/"

    def get_form_kwargs(self):
        """This method is what injects forms with their keyword
            arguments."""
        # grab the current set of form #kwargs
        kwargs = super(MyUpdateView, self).get_form_kwargs()
        # Update the kwargs with the user_id
        kwargs['user_id'] = self.request.user.pk
        return kwargs

Additional Notes

You can use this technique with:

  • forms.Form
  • forms.ModelForm
  • CreateView
  • FormView
  • UpdateView

As always, https://ccbv.co.uk is a great resource for deliving into Django forms.

While this technique is used by django-braces through the UserFormKwargsMixin and UserKwargModelFormMixin mixins, it's useful to know how to do it outside that very useful tool. The reason being that attaching the user object or user_id is just one option out of many.

django-vanilla-views

This should also work with django-vanilla-views, but I haven't tested it yet.

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On October 4th and 5th I'll be at BarCamp Django SF if you want to talk about Django, Python, or have me teach you how to do cartwheels.


Tags: python django howto class-based-views forms
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