Question

I have a model like this

class Timer(models.Model):
"""Represents a timing system"""

   start_time = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now())
   end_time = models.DateTimeField()

and a form that takes this as the model

class JobForm(forms.ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        exclude = ['slug','author','duration',]
        model = Job

Trouble comes in when i want to add some timing info, and by that i mean that i have to enter it in the long format

DD-MM-YYYY HH:MM:SS 

the times will be added in real time on the same day as they happen, so the long format looks like a waste of effort, i would rather do it as

HH:MM

i cant use model.TimeField because i will calculate a duration between a start time and the end time, and someone may straddle midnight by timing their sleep or who knows what else.
How would i allow input in HH:MM and have it as datetimefield (eventualy after some effort)? Id like the code to assume the same date as the current date give HH:MM

Answer 1

After looking at the forms documentation, this is what iv decided to do, since i didn’t understand @cclerville’s suggestion (maybe django is poor?)
here goes:
in my forms.py

class MyDateTimeField(forms.Field):

    def to_python(self, value):
        # Return an empty list if no input was given.
        if not value:
            return []
        import datetime 
        today = datetime.date.today()
        hhmm = value.split(':')
        val= datetime.datetime.combine(datetime.date.today(), datetime.time(int(hhmm[0]),int(hhmm[1])))
        return val

and the form itself:

class JobForm(forms.ModelForm):
    end_time = MyDateTimeField()