Question

I have a many-to-many relationship between two classes (Lesson and Student), with an intermediary class (Evaluation).

I am trying to set up a form which will allow me to add a lesson with students and the related evaluation data. I can get all of the fields I want to display correctly, however I also need to set an initial value behind the scenes (the current user), as it does not make sense to have it in the form.

I have tried following the docs but I think I have a syntax error in the way I am passing the data to the formset.

The error I receive is as follows:

__init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'initial'

My actual view (with my attempt at adding the initial data removed) looks like this:

def addlesson(request):
LessonFormset = inlineformset_factory(Lesson, Evaluation, exclude=('user',), max_num=5)
if request.method == 'POST':
    lesson = Lesson(user=request.user)
    form = LessonForm(request.POST, instance=lesson, user = request.user)
    formset = LessonFormset(request.POST, instance = lesson)
    if form.is_valid() and formset.is_valid():
        form.save()
        formset.save()
        return HttpResponseRedirect("/")
else:
    form = LessonForm(user = request.user)
    formset = LessonFormset()
return render_to_response("addlesson.html", {
    'form': form,
    'formset' : formset,
}, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Could anyone show me to correct syntax to use to set the current user in the formset?
This is what I had before but it was giving me the error at the start of my post:

initial={'user': request.user},

Any advice appreciated

Thanks

Answer 1

It’s not clear to me why you are using a formset when it looks like you only want to add one row. A regular form would have been how I would do it if there was only one row. But, here’s how I set the default value in a formset.

I exclude the field, just like you already have in your code. Then:

if form.is_valid() and formset.is_valid():
    form.save()
    models = formset.save(commit=False)
    for i in models:
        i.user = request.user
        i.save()
    return HttpResponseRedirect("/")