Question

I have a base class that is a Django form. The child class then inherits from the parent including all the fields, but I need to make changes to one of the parent’s field option such as label, required, and etc.

Example:

class BaseForm(forms.Form):
    userid = forms.CharField(required=True)

class ChildForm(BaseForm):
    # I need to change the parent field option 
    userid = forms.CharField(required=False)

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You’re doing exactly what you should do.

It’s particularly fitting in this case because that’s the exact pattern for overriding ModelForm fields.

If you need to retain properties you don’t know about / are outside your control (or what have you), you could override the __init__ method and access the form fields via self.fields['myfield']

class ChildForm(BaseForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(ChildForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['userid'].required = False