Question

I have two forms: one that takes user information (name, birthdate, etc): formA. And another one that contains a textfield the user can input text into: formB.

formB’s model has the actual textfield, and a “name” that links it to the user this text belongs to. This field is called text_name. text_name is a foreign key linked to the Name model (that’s linked to formA).

In my view’s template, I am only allowing the user to see the textbox they can input information into from formB, and they can also see all the fields in formA.
This means the text_name dropdown box is not displayed.

formA is currently being prepopulated with data from a different session.

This is my view:

def name(request):

    ses = request.session.get('ses',  None)

    formA = Name_Form(request.POST, instance = ses)
    formB = Text_Form(request.POST or None)
    formB.text_name = ses

    if request.method == 'POST':
            formB.text_name = ses
            if formA.is_valid() and formB.is_valid():
                    formB.note_job = ses
                    a = formA.save()
                    a.save()
                    b = formB.save()
                    b.save()

formB is not valid because text_name is not being populated. I tried populating using this line:

formB.text_name = ses

but that did not work.

How do I automatically populate text_name with the information inputted already without actually displaying text_name in my template and therefore forcing the user to actually choose the appropriate text_name manually.

Answer 1

If you want to do extra processing on a model instance of a modelform before saving, there are at least two simple options:

1. Access the modelform model instance before saving through form.instance: formB.instance.text_name = ses; formB.save()

2. Save manually with commit=False: objB = formB.save(commit=False); objB.text_name = ses; objB.save(), in that case make sure that Text_Form has ‘text_name’ in it’s excluded field list.