Question

I have a form with n fields. The first 4 fields should be displayed differently in my template then the rest of the form. Therefore, I was wondering if I can somehow loop over the first 4 fields, end the loop and continue looping over the rest of the fields later in the template.

        <table>
            {% for field in form %}
            {% if forloop.counter == 4 <<< Break here >>>%}
            <tr>
                <td> {{ field.label_tag }} </td>
                <td> {{ field }} </td>
            </tr>
            {% endfor %}
        </table>
        .... Different code ....
        <table>
            {% for field in form %} <<< Continue here >>>
            <tr>
                <td> {{ field.label_tag }} </td>
                <td> {{ field }} </td>
            </tr>
            {% endfor %}
        </table>

I have found this code but I was wondering if I could structure the template differently or if I have missed some new changes in Django 1.3 which allow the breaking of loops now.

Normally, I would split the form in two seperate forms, but I would like to reuse the form definition in other templates as well, therefore I would like to keep all information together in one form.

Thank you for your advice!

Answer 1

It’s the same solution as other “can’t do it in the template” problems: do it in the view. I truly believe added complexity and further separation of logic into multiple code areas (tags, new files, etc.) only hurts maintainability. I separate / implement DRY only when things actually do get repetitive, unreadable, etc.

Everything else is premature optimization.

Django won’t know the difference when a form is submitted.

fields = list(form)    
part1, part2 = fields[:4], fields[4:]


{% for field in part1 %}{{ field }}{% endfor %}
...
{% for field in part2 %}{{ field }}{% endfor %}