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Forms

Forms

Django uses forms are used to get user input and works similarly to HTML forms.

<form action="""" method=""POST"">
  <input id=""your_input"" type=""text"" name=""your_input"" value=""{{ current_input }}"">
  <input type=""submit"" value=""OK"">
</form>

Form Creation

Django forms are created using HTML.

<form>
  <input type="text" placeholder="Search"/>
  <input type="submit" value="Submit" / >
</form>"

Form Attributes

The <form>‘s action attribute should be set as "" and the method set as "POST". There must be an input type of "submit" included in the <form> tags.

<form action="" method="POST">
   <input id="your_input" type="text" name="your_input" value="{{ current_input }}">
  <input type="submit" value="OK">
</form>

Form Submission

Form data is sent to the application when the submit input is clicked.

<input type="submit" value="submit" />

Checking Request Types

Inside the view function, a request method is checked with a conditional statement. 

def contact(request):
  if request.method == 'POST': # Check for method type
      # Add logic for manipulating form data
    return render(request, 'contact.html', {
          'form': form,
    })

Getting POST Data

Form data can be accessed using dot notation and bracket notation.

test_model.field = request.POST["field_from_html"]

Using Form Data for Models

The model must be imported into views.py in order to manipulate or create a model instance.

from .models import Model_Name


def renderTemplate(request):
  if request.method == "POST":
    test_model = new Model_Name()
    test_model.field = request.POST["field_from_html"]
    test_model.save()
  return render(request, 'template_name.html')

Generic Forms

Forms can be created using generic types inside a file named forms.py.

myProject/
  └── myApp/
    └── forms.py

Import Forms

Forms must be imported as well as the classes to be used in the application.

from django import forms 


class TestForm(forms.ModelForm): 
  # Info for TestForm goes here

Forms Class

Class properties must be assigned to a field from forms. 

from django import forms 


class TestForm(forms.ModelForm): 
  class Meta:
    model = Test

Form Redirections

Users can be redirected to a success page after form submission to reduce the chances of a form being submitted more than once.

from .models import Model_Name


def renderTemplate(request):
  if request.method == 'POST':
    test_model = new Model_Name()
    test_model.field = request.POST[""field_from_html""]
    test_model.save()
    return render(request, 'submit_success.html')
  return render(request, 'template_name.html'

forms.py Organization

Multiple forms can be created in forms.py and require a system of organization to keep it easy to read.

myProject/
  └── myApp/
    └── forms.py

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