Question

I want to show a title and description from a db query in each form, but I don’t want it to be in a charfield, I want it to be html-formatted text.

sample template code:

{% for form, data in zipped_data %}    <div class='row'>       <div class='first_col'>          <span class='title'>{{ data.0 }}</span>          <div class='desc'>             {{ data.1|default:'None' }}          </div>       </div>       {% for field in form %}          <div class='fieldWrapper' style='float: left; '>             {{ field.errors }}             {{ field }}          </div>       {% endfor %} {% endfor %} 

Is this the most idiomatic way of doing this? Or, is there a way to add text that will not be displayed inside of a textarea or text input to my model:

class ReportForm(forms.Form):    comment = forms.CharField() 

?

Answer 1

Instead of zipping your forms with the additional data, you can override the constructor on your form and hold your title/description as instance-level member variables. This is a bit more object-oriented and learning how to do this will help you solve other problems down the road such as dynamic choice fields.

class MyForm (forms.Form):     def __init__ (self, title, desc, *args, **kwargs):         self.title = title         self.desc = desc         super (MyForm, self).__init__ (*args, **kwargs) # call base class 

Then in your view code:

form = MyForm ('Title A', 'Description A') 

Adjust accordingly if you need these values to come from the database. Then in your template, you access the instance variables just like you do anything else, e.g.:

   <h1>{{ form.title }}</h1>    <p>{{ form.desc }}</p> 

From the way you phrased your question, I think you probably have some confusion around the way Django uses Python class attributes to provide a declarative form API versus instance-level attributes that you apply to individual instances of a class, in this case your form objects.

• Check out this link for a good discussion on the distinction
• And this one