django-forms Using Model Form Using Django Model Form with Django Class Based View.

Example

Django Model Form with Django Class Based view is a classic way of building pages to do create/update operations in django application quickly. Within the form we can put methods to execute tasks. Its a cleaner way to put tasks in forms rather than putting in views/models.

To give an example using Django Model Form, first we need to define our Model.

class MyModel(models.Model):
   name = models.CharField(
          verbose_name = 'Name',
          max_length = 255)

Now let us make a form using this model:

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        fields = '__all__'

Lets add a method to print hello world in it.

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        fields = '__all__'
    
    def print_hello_world(self):
         print('Hello World')

Lets make a template to display the form:

<form method="post" action="">
    {% csrf_token %}
<ul>
    {{ form.as_p }}
</ul>
<input type="submit" value="Submit Form"/>
</form>

Now we will use this form in three different views which will respectively Create and Update tasks.

from django.views.generic.edit import CreateView, UpdateView
from myapp.models import MyModel

class MyModelCreate(CreateView):
    model = MyModel
    fields = ['name']
    form_class = MyModelForm
    template_name = 'my_template.html'

    def form_valid(self, form):
        # This method is called when valid form data has been POSTed.
        # It should return an HttpResponse.
        form.print_hello_world() # This method will print hello world in console
        return super(MyModelCreate, self).form_valid(form)
    

class MyModelUpdate(UpdateView):
    model = MyModel
    fields = ['name']
    form_class = MyModelForm
    template_name = 'my_template.html'

Now lets create a urls for accessing those views.

from django.conf.urls import url
from myapp.views import MyModelCreate, MyModelUpdate

urlpatterns = [
    # ...
    url(r'mymodel/add/$', MyModelCreate.as_view(), name='author-add'),
    url(r'mymodel/(?P<pk>[0-9]+)/$', MyModelUpdate.as_view(), name='author-update')
]

Okay, our work has been done. We can access url: localhost:8000/mymodel/add for creating entry in the model. Also access localhost:8000/mymodel/1 to update that entry.