Question

I am trying to create an edit form for my model. I did not use a model form because depending on the model type, there are different forms that the user can use. (For example, one of the forms has a Tinymce widget, while the other doesn’t.)

Is there any way of setting the initial data of a form (not a ModelForm) using a model?

I tried the following but getting an error:

b = get_object_or_404(Business, user=request.user)
form = f(initial = b)

where f is a subclass of forms.Form

The error I am getting is AttributeError: 'Business' object has no attribute 'get'

Answer 1

The initial data needs to be a dict (or at least have a dict-like interface, which a Django model does not have).

You can construct a dict from your model using django.forms.models.model_to_dict:

from django.forms.models import model_to_dict
b_as_dict = model_to_dict(b)

This is the same function Django’s built in ModelForm class uses to set its initial data, and while you’ve specified that you don’t want to use a ModelForm it may be more convenient to find some way of structuring your code that allows you to do so.