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Django Forms

Learn how to manage forms in Django - For beginners

This page explains how to manage and validate a form in Django Framework. We assume the audience has already a Django project up and running.

For those that start from nothing, feel free to access the resources mentioned below and come back here once the content is understood:

Django Forms - Tutorial provided by AppSeed.

Topics covered by this tutorial

  • ✅ Create a new Django app
  • ✅ Define a new route
  • ✅ Update the configuration to include the new application
  • ✅ Code a simple form
  • ✅ Integrate the Form into a real page
  • ✅ Update the controller to check the form is validated

The video presentation of this tutorial can be found on Github:

Django For Beginners - How to add a new form

✅ Create a new Application​

For this, we will use the startapp Django subcommand:

$ python manage.py startapp forms

Add a simple view in forms - forms/views.py

# File contents: forms/views.py

from django.shortcuts import render

from django.http import HttpResponse

def index(request):
    return HttpResponse("Hello Django - Forms")

Define the routing for our new app - forms/urls.py

from django.urls import path, re_path
from forms import views

urlpatterns = [

    # The home page
    path('forms/', views.index, name='home'),
]

Update settings to include the new app - config/settings.py

# File: config/settings.py (partial content)
...
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'forms',                           # <-- NEW
]

Update routing - config/urls.py

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include  # <-- UPDATED to add 'include'

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path(""      , include("forms.urls")), # Forms app routing
]

Once we restart the project, the new route /forms should be visible:

Django Forms - A Hello-World type route

✅ Define a new form​

Inside the newly created app, we need to create a forms file and define the new Form Class object.

# File contents: forms/forms.py

from django import forms

class HelloForm(forms.Form):

    title   = forms.CharField()
    message = forms.CharField()
    email   = forms.EmailField(required=False)

Controller code - forms/views.py, the index() method

from .forms import HelloForm

def index(request):

    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = HelloForm(request.POST)
        if form.is_valid():
            return HttpResponse("Form is valid")

    else:
        form = HelloForm()

    return render(request, 'hello.html', {'form': form})

\

Update App configuration to include the new Templates folder, core/settings.py for AppSeed projects.

FORMS_TEMPLATES = os.path.join(CORE_DIR, "forms/templates") # <-- NEW

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [TEMPLATE_DIR, FORMS_TEMPLATES],            # <-- UPDATED LINE
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
                'apps.context_processors.cfg_assets_root',
            ],
        },
    },
]

HTML page - defined in forms/templates folder:

<form action="" method="post">
    {\% csrf_token \%} <!-- NOTE: remove the Back Slash character -->

    <table>
        {{ form.as_table }}
    </table>
    <br />
    <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

Django Forms - Completed with user Data

If all fields are provided, on submit, we should see the Form is valid message.

Update the form with a new field ID (numeric type):

from django import forms

class HelloForm(forms.Form):

    title   = forms.CharField()
    message = forms.CharField()
    id      = forms.IntegerField()              # <-- NEW form field
    email   = forms.EmailField(required=False)

The page server to the users is updated automaticaly to include the new field

Django Forms - Integer Field Added

Thanks for reading! For more topics, feel free to contact Appseed.

✅ Resources​