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:

• 👉 How to install Django - simple, tested steps to install Django

• 👉 Django for beginners - a comprehensive tutorial that covers the basics

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

• Read more about Django (official docs)
• Start fast a new project using development-ready Django Starters