Question

I django, I can access the value of a field in a ModelForm by using the “initial” keyword.

I have no idea why, or what it is. Is it only used for accessing the value when i want to initialise it? Are there times when I cannot use the “initial” keyword?

I guess I’m asking this because ‘initial’ implies, well, initialising a value.

Apparently after calling “save” on a form I cannot change any values – but does that mean I can use “initial” willy nilly before then?

Answer 1

These should help:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/forms/fields/#initial

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/forms/api/#dynamic-initial-values

It’s a place to stick initial field values that you want the fields populated with when the page loads. You probably want to put things into initial during a get, and not mess with it during a post.