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All of our Code for Life projects use the free, open source Django framework, which means it’s really worthwhile for us to get to grips with the framework’s architecture. One of the many benefits of Django is that it provides a form handling service (for a general tutorial on Django forms, click here).

Like most websites, the Code for Life portal includes forms for logging in, registering and contacting the Ocado Technology team responsible for the project.

This tutorial will take you through how forms are organised, using the above mentioned website as an example.

Create the form class

First, you need to create your all important form class using a Python file: this will contain your form’s widgets, and will dictate the logic behind the data validation.

1. Go to the forms folder. Here are the files which contain the forms of the project.

2. Choose the file which is relevant to your form – ie: in the portal project, the teach.py file defines all
forms that a teacher requires. If there is no suitable file, create it!

3. Define your form class like so:

class FormName(forms.Form):

4. Define the widgets.

This is where you decide on what fields to include within your form, and their properties. For example the code below defines a field (an input box) for entering your first name and sets a maximum character limit of 100 as a property of that field:

first_name = forms.CharField(
     label=”First name”,
     max_length=100,
     widget=forms.TextInput(
           attrs={
                ‘placeholder:’ ‘Grace’
           }
     )
)

From the user’s perspective they will see the input field for their first name and a placeholder ‘Grace’ which helps them to understand how to fill in the box, if they are struggling to remember what a ‘first name’ is…

Have a look around the current forms to find out how to define other widgets, such as email fields, drop downs, password fields, etc.

5. Define methods for validation.

This is where you should handle things like making sure:

– A unique field isn’t entered twice

– Passwords are valid and match the confirmation password, etc…

When the data inputted isn’t valid, you may raise the following error:

raise forms.ValidationError(“error message”)

To read more about forms and field validation, click here.

Your form class is now complete. Go celebrate with a nice cup of tea.

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How to add a Django form to a project