API in forms-Free Django Tutorials

I hope you have checked our last post on forms in which we have covered on form.is_valid() to validate data.

So continuing that in which we have entered some wrong data as following:

data = {'subject': '',
       'message': 'Hi there',
       'sender': 'invalid email address',
       'cc_myself': True}

f = ContactForm(data)

f.is_valid()
False

So is_valid() is giving us a boolean value False,so there may be some wrong in the data we have entered.

Form.errors

by this attribute we can get a dictionary of error messages.

For example in the above form details we will a error dictionary message containing to keys sender and subject and their pair values as perspective ‘Enter a valid email address’ and ‘This field is required’.

Dynamic initial values

Form.initial

By the use of this initial,we can declare the initial value of form field at runtime.
To accomplish that given task of initializing it with a initial value we can use the initial argument in a Form.It’s not necessary that we will include initial value to every filed in our form.For example:

>>> f = ContactForm(initial={'subject': 'Hi there!'})

If we have two initial in the form,then the later will have precedence.

>>> from django import forms
>>> class CommentForm(forms.Form):
...     name = forms.CharField(initial='class')
...     url = forms.URLField()
...     comment = forms.CharField()
>>> f = CommentForm(initial={'name': 'instance'}, auto_id=False)
>>> print(f)
<tr><th>Name:</th><td><input type="text" name="name" value="instance" required /></td></tr>
<tr><th>Url:</th><td><input type="url" name="url" required /></td></tr>
<tr><th>Comment:</th><td><input type="text" name="comment" required /></td></tr>

Accessing the fields from the form

Form.fields

With this fields attribute we can access the fields of Form instance.For example in the above form class:

>>> for row in f.fields.values(): print(row)
...
<django.forms.fields.CharField object at 0x7ffaac632510>
<django.forms.fields.URLField object at 0x7ffaac632f90>
<django.forms.fields.CharField object at 0x7ffaac3aa050>
>>> f.fields['name']
<django.forms.fields.CharField object at 0x7ffaac6324d0>

Outputting forms as HTML

We can simply render the form itself as HTML as following by just printing it:

>>> f = ContactForm()
>>> print(f)
<tr><th><label for="id_subject">Subject:</label></th><td><input id="id_subject" type="text" name="subject" maxlength="100" required /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_message">Message:</label></th><td><input type="text" name="message" id="id_message" required /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_sender">Sender:</label></th><td><input type="email" name="sender" id="id_sender" required /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_cc_myself">Cc myself:</label></th><td><input type="checkbox" name="cc_myself" id="id_cc_myself" /></td></tr>

as_p()

as_p() will render the form as a series of <p> tags, with each <p> containing one field:

>>> f = ContactForm()
>>> f.as_p()
'<p><label for="id_subject">Subject:</label> <input id="id_subject" type="text" name="subject" maxlength="100" required /></p>\n<p><label for="id_message">Message:</label> <input type="text" name="message" id="id_message" required /></p>\n<p><label for="id_sender">Sender:</label> <input type="text" name="sender" id="id_sender" required /></p>\n<p><label for="id_cc_myself">Cc myself:</label> <input type="checkbox" name="cc_myself" id="id_cc_myself" /></p>'
>>> print(f.as_p())
<p><label for="id_subject">Subject:</label> <input id="id_subject" type="text" name="subject" maxlength="100" required /></p>
<p><label for="id_message">Message:</label> <input type="text" name="message" id="id_message" required /></p>
<p><label for="id_sender">Sender:</label> <input type="email" name="sender" id="id_sender" required /></p>
<p><label for="id_cc_myself">Cc myself:</label> <input type="checkbox" name="cc_myself" id="id_cc_myself" /></p>

as_ul()

>>> f = ContactForm()
>>> f.as_ul()
'<li><label for="id_subject">Subject:</label> <input id="id_subject" type="text" name="subject" maxlength="100" required /></li>\n<li><label for="id_message">Message:</label> <input type="text" name="message" id="id_message" required /></li>\n<li><label for="id_sender">Sender:</label> <input type="email" name="sender" id="id_sender" required /></li>\n<li><label for="id_cc_myself">Cc myself:</label> <input type="checkbox" name="cc_myself" id="id_cc_myself" /></li>'
>>> print(f.as_ul())
<li><label for="id_subject">Subject:</label> <input id="id_subject" type="text" name="subject" maxlength="100" required /></li>
<li><label for="id_message">Message:</label> <input type="text" name="message" id="id_message" required /></li>
<li><label for="id_sender">Sender:</label> <input type="email" name="sender" id="id_sender" required /></li>
<li><label for="id_cc_myself">Cc myself:</label> <input type="checkbox" name="cc_myself" id="id_cc_myself" /></li>

as_table()

>>> f = ContactForm()
>>> f.as_table()
'<tr><th><label for="id_subject">Subject:</label></th><td><input id="id_subject" type="text" name="subject" maxlength="100" required /></td></tr>\n<tr><th><label for="id_message">Message:</label></th><td><input type="text" name="message" id="id_message" required /></td></tr>\n<tr><th><label for="id_sender">Sender:</label></th><td><input type="email" name="sender" id="id_sender" required /></td></tr>\n<tr><th><label for="id_cc_myself">Cc myself:</label></th><td><input type="checkbox" name="cc_myself" id="id_cc_myself" /></td></tr>'
>>> print(f)
<tr><th><label for="id_subject">Subject:</label></th><td><input id="id_subject" type="text" name="subject" maxlength="100" required /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_message">Message:</label></th><td><input type="text" name="message" id="id_message" required /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_sender">Sender:</label></th><td><input type="email" name="sender" id="id_sender" required /></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_cc_myself">Cc myself:</label></th><td><input type="checkbox" name="cc_myself" id="id_cc_myself" /></td></tr>

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So this is all about API’s in forms.