Question

I have a view which validates data from a form which just has some basic information about an item. I’m confused with how the is_valid method works here even after reading
this . If the user doesn’t input some of the required fields like name or image 1, I want them to see the error on the page “this field is required” or something of that nature. I thought if the form.is_valid returned False, these messages would automatically be raised on the page for the user. Or do I need to specify what error message for each field somewhere that I would want the user see?

    #view
            def sell(request):
                if request.method == "POST":
                    form = AddItem(request.POST, request.FILES)
                    if form.is_valid():
                        item = form.save(commit=False)
                        item.user = request.user
                        item.is_active = True
                        item.slug = slugify(item.name)
                        item.save()
                        return HttpResponseRedirect('thanks.html')  
                else:
                    form = AddItem()
                    return render_to_response('forsale.html', locals(), context_instance=RequestContext(request))

    #form    
        class AddItem(forms.ModelForm):
            name = forms.CharField(label="Title")


            class Meta:
                model = Item
                exclude = ('user','slug','is_active',)

#model

class Item(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    name = models.CharField(max_length=75)
    slug = models.SlugField(max_length=50, unique=True)
    is_active = models.BooleanField(default=True, blank=True)
    image1 =  models.ImageField(upload_to='img')
    image2 =  models.ImageField(upload_to='img', blank=True)
    image3 =  models.ImageField(upload_to='img', blank=True)
    image_caption1 = models.CharField(max_length=200, blank=True)
    image_caption2 = models.CharField(max_length=200, blank=True)
    image_caption3 = models.CharField(max_length=200, blank=True)
    price = models.DecimalField(max_digits=8, decimal_places=2)
    quantity = models.IntegerField(default=1)
    description = models.TextField()
    created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    shipping_price = models.DecimalField(decimal_places=2, max_digits=6)
    categories = models.ManyToManyField(Category)

Answer 1

You need to extract the errors from the form object using form.errors then deal with the dict however you want. If you’re using ajax, simply send the dict as json back over and use javascript to handle it. If it was a direct html form submit, then you need to render and respond with a page with the errors in the passed dictionary and deal with the passed error in the template (usually with an {% if errors %} tag