Question

I have quite unique problem with django.

Im providing website users interface for editing large data. Each row on this data represents a row in database. Or one object of certain Type.

Users click on cells in the table and form opens where they can edit this fields/column value.

In essence it works like this:
1) based on where user clicks, query is sent to server containting object id and the field that he is editing.
2) based on this information form is created on the fly:

class FieldEditorForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = MyObject
        fields = ['id', field ]

Notice the field there is Variable not name of the field.

3) this field passes its own modelform validation and all is fine. in save method Model.save() is enough to update the value.

But now to the problem. Sometimes empty value is sent to server in this form. Empy value such as u” or almost emtpty like u’ ‘. I want to repace this with None so NULL would be saved to database.

There are two places where i could do that. In field validation modifying the cleaned_data or in form save method.

Both approaches raise unique problem as i dont know how to create variable function names.

def clean_%(field)s(): 

or in case of form save method

r.%(field)s = None

is what i need, but those methods dont work. So how can i create method name which is variable or set objects variable parameter to something. Is it even possible or do i have to rethink my approach there?

Alan

Answer 1

In the latter case, setattr(r, field + 's', None).