Question

I am creating a form which will allow a user to send an email to multiple people (students).

I have used ModelMultipleChoiceField to create checkboxes for each user, however I’m not sure how to deal with the data that gets posted.

Here’s my view so far:

if request.method == 'POST':    
        subject = request.POST['subject']                 
        message = request.POST['message'] 
        email = EmailMessage(subject, message, '[e-mail]',
                recipient_addresses)

        email.send()
else:

    students = Student.objects.exclude(email='')
    form = StudentListForm(students=students)

The form just posts the ID numbers of the selected recipients. Do I have to filter Student objects like this:

Student.objects.filter(pk__in=request.POST['students'])

Or is there a ‘better’ way?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

You’re missing most of the point of using a form, which is to rely on it for validation and data conversion, as well as simply showing fields in HTML.

if request.method == 'POST':
    form = StudentListForm(data=request.POST)
    if form.is_valid():
        subject = form.cleaned_data['subject']
        message = form.cleaned_data['message']
        recipients = form.cleaned_data['recipients']
        recipient_addresses = [r.email for r in recipients]
        email = ...

Basically, you should always access form.cleaned_data instead of request.POST.