Django Passing Custom Form Parameters to Formset
Question:
This was fixed in Django 1.9 with form_kwargs.
I have a Django Form that looks like this:
class ServiceForm(forms.Form):
option = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=ServiceOption.objects.none())
rate = forms.DecimalField(widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
units = forms.IntegerField(min_value=1, widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
affiliate = kwargs.pop('affiliate')
super(ServiceForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
self.fields["option"].queryset = ServiceOption.objects.filter(affiliate=affiliate)
I call this form with something like this:
form = ServiceForm(affiliate=request.affiliate)
Where request.affiliate is the logged in user. This works as intended.
My problem is that I now want to turn this single form into a formset. What I can’t figure out is how I can pass the affiliate information to the individual forms when creating the formset. According to the docs to make a formset out of this I need to do something like this:
ServiceFormSet = forms.formsets.formset_factory(ServiceForm, extra=3)
And then I need to create it like this:
formset = ServiceFormSet()
Now how can I pass affiliate=request.affiliate to the individual forms this way?
Answers:
I would build the form class dynamically in a function, so that it has access to the affiliate via closure:
def make_service_form(affiliate):
class ServiceForm(forms.Form):
option = forms.ModelChoiceField(
queryset=ServiceOption.objects.filter(affiliate=affiliate))
rate = forms.DecimalField(widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
units = forms.IntegerField(min_value=1,
widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
return ServiceForm
As a bonus, you don’t have to rewrite the queryset in the option field. The downside is that subclassing is a little funky. (Any subclass has to be made in a similar way.)
edit:
In response to a comment, you can call this function about any place you would use the class name:
def view(request):
affiliate = get_object_or_404(id=request.GET.get('id'))
formset_cls = formset_factory(make_service_form(affiliate))
formset = formset_cls(request.POST)
...
I like the closure solution for being “cleaner” and more Pythonic (so +1 to mmarshall answer) but Django forms also have a callback mechanism you can use for filtering querysets in formsets.
It’s also not documented, which I think is an indicator the Django devs might not like it as much.
So you basically create your formset the same but add the callback:
ServiceFormSet = forms.formsets.formset_factory(
ServiceForm, extra=3, formfield_callback=Callback('option', affiliate).cb)
This is creating an instance of a class that looks like this:
class Callback(object):
def __init__(self, field_name, aff):
self._field_name = field_name
self._aff = aff
def cb(self, field, **kwargs):
nf = field.formfield(**kwargs)
if field.name == self._field_name: # this is 'options' field
nf.queryset = ServiceOption.objects.filter(affiliate=self._aff)
return nf
This should give you the general idea. It’s a little more complex making the callback an object method like this, but gives you a little more flexibility as opposed to doing a simple function callback.
I would use functools.partial and functools.wraps:
from functools import partial, wraps
from django.forms.formsets import formset_factory
ServiceFormSet = formset_factory(wraps(ServiceForm)(partial(ServiceForm, affiliate=request.affiliate)), extra=3)
I think this is the cleanest approach, and doesn’t affect ServiceForm in any way (i.e. by making it difficult to subclass).
I wanted to place this as a comment to Carl Meyers answer, but since that requires points I just placed it here. This took me 2 hours to figure out so I hope it will help someone.
A note about using the inlineformset_factory.
I used that solution my self and it worked perfect, until I tried it with the inlineformset_factory. I was running Django 1.0.2 and got some strange KeyError exception. I upgraded to latest trunk and it worked direct.
I can now use it similar to this:
BookFormSet = inlineformset_factory(Author, Book, form=BookForm)
BookFormSet.form = staticmethod(curry(BookForm, user=request.user))
I spent some time trying to figure out this problem before I saw this posting.
The solution I came up with was the closure solution (and it is a solution I’ve used before with Django model forms).
I tried the curry() method as described above, but I just couldn’t get it to work with Django 1.0 so in the end I reverted to the closure method.
The closure method is very neat and the only slight oddness is that the class definition is nested inside the view or another function. I think the fact that this looks odd to me is a hangup from my previous programming experience and I think someone with a background in more dynamic languages wouldn’t bat an eyelid!
I had to do a similar thing. This is similar to the curry solution:
def form_with_my_variable(myvar):
class MyForm(ServiceForm):
def __init__(self, myvar=myvar, *args, **kwargs):
super(SeriveForm, self).__init__(myvar=myvar, *args, **kwargs)
return MyForm
factory = inlineformset_factory(..., form=form_with_my_variable(myvar), ... )
Carl Meyer’s solution looks very elegant. I tried implementing it for modelformsets. I was under the impression that I could not call staticmethods within a class, but the following inexplicably works:
class MyModel(models.Model):
myField = models.CharField(max_length=10)
class MyForm(ModelForm):
_request = None
class Meta:
model = MyModel
def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):
self._request = kwargs.pop('request', None)
super(MyForm,self).__init__(*args,**kwargs)
class MyFormsetBase(BaseModelFormSet):
_request = None
def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):
self._request = kwargs.pop('request', None)
subFormClass = self.form
self.form = curry(subFormClass,request=self._request)
super(MyFormsetBase,self).__init__(*args,**kwargs)
MyFormset = modelformset_factory(MyModel,formset=MyFormsetBase,extra=1,max_num=10,can_delete=True)
MyFormset.form = staticmethod(curry(MyForm,request=MyFormsetBase._request))
In my view, if I do something like this:
formset = MyFormset(request.POST,queryset=MyModel.objects.all(),request=request)
Then the “request” keyword gets propagated to all of the member forms of my formset. I’m pleased, but I have no idea why this is working – it seems wrong. Any suggestions?
I’m a newbie here so I can’t add comment. I hope this code will work too:
ServiceFormSet = formset_factory(ServiceForm, extra=3)
ServiceFormSet.formset = staticmethod(curry(ServiceForm, affiliate=request.affiliate))
as for adding additional parameters to the formset’s BaseFormSet instead of form.
As of commit e091c18f50266097f648efc7cac2503968e9d217 on Tue Aug 14 23:44:46 2012 +0200 the accepted solution can’t work anymore.
The current version of django.forms.models.modelform_factory() function uses a “type construction technique”, calling the type() function on the passed form to get the metaclass type, then using the result to construct a class-object of its type on the fly::
# Instatiate type(form) in order to use the same metaclass as form.
return type(form)(class_name, (form,), form_class_attrs)
This means even a curryed or partial object passed instead of a form “causes the duck to bite you” so to speak: it’ll call a function with the construction parameters of a ModelFormClass object, returning the error message::
function() argument 1 must be code, not str
To work around this I wrote a generator function that uses a closure to return a subclass of any class specified as first parameter, that then calls super.__init__ after updateing the kwargs with the ones supplied on the generator function’s call::
def class_gen_with_kwarg(cls, **additionalkwargs):
"""class generator for subclasses with additional 'stored' parameters (in a closure)
This is required to use a formset_factory with a form that need additional
initialization parameters (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/622982/django-passing-custom-form-parameters-to-formset)
"""
class ClassWithKwargs(cls):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
kwargs.update(additionalkwargs)
super(ClassWithKwargs, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
return ClassWithKwargs
Then in your code you’ll call the form factory as::
MyFormSet = inlineformset_factory(ParentModel, Model,form = class_gen_with_kwarg(MyForm, user=self.request.user))
caveats:
- this received very little testing, at least for now
- supplied parameters could clash and overwrite those used by whatever code will use the object returned by the constructor
This is what worked for me, Django 1.7:
from django.utils.functional import curry
lols = {'lols':'lols'}
formset = modelformset_factory(MyModel, form=myForm, extra=0)
formset.form = staticmethod(curry(MyForm, lols=lols))
return formset
#form.py
class MyForm(forms.ModelForm):
def __init__(self, lols, *args, **kwargs):
Hope it helps someone, took me long enough to figure it out 😉
Official Document Way
Django 2.0:
ArticleFormSet = formset_factory(MyArticleForm)
formset = ArticleFormSet(form_kwargs={'user': request.user})
based on this answer I found more clear solution:
class ServiceForm(forms.Form):
option = forms.ModelChoiceField(
queryset=ServiceOption.objects.filter(affiliate=self.affiliate))
rate = forms.DecimalField(widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
units = forms.IntegerField(min_value=1,
widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
@staticmethod
def make_service_form(affiliate):
self.affiliate = affiliate
return ServiceForm
And run it in view like
formset_factory(form=ServiceForm.make_service_form(affiliate))
This was fixed in Django 1.9 with form_kwargs.
I have a Django Form that looks like this:
class ServiceForm(forms.Form):
option = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=ServiceOption.objects.none())
rate = forms.DecimalField(widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
units = forms.IntegerField(min_value=1, widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
affiliate = kwargs.pop('affiliate')
super(ServiceForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
self.fields["option"].queryset = ServiceOption.objects.filter(affiliate=affiliate)
I call this form with something like this:
form = ServiceForm(affiliate=request.affiliate)
Where request.affiliate is the logged in user. This works as intended.
My problem is that I now want to turn this single form into a formset. What I can’t figure out is how I can pass the affiliate information to the individual forms when creating the formset. According to the docs to make a formset out of this I need to do something like this:
ServiceFormSet = forms.formsets.formset_factory(ServiceForm, extra=3)
And then I need to create it like this:
formset = ServiceFormSet()
Now how can I pass affiliate=request.affiliate to the individual forms this way?
I would build the form class dynamically in a function, so that it has access to the affiliate via closure:
def make_service_form(affiliate):
class ServiceForm(forms.Form):
option = forms.ModelChoiceField(
queryset=ServiceOption.objects.filter(affiliate=affiliate))
rate = forms.DecimalField(widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
units = forms.IntegerField(min_value=1,
widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
return ServiceForm
As a bonus, you don’t have to rewrite the queryset in the option field. The downside is that subclassing is a little funky. (Any subclass has to be made in a similar way.)
edit:
In response to a comment, you can call this function about any place you would use the class name:
def view(request):
affiliate = get_object_or_404(id=request.GET.get('id'))
formset_cls = formset_factory(make_service_form(affiliate))
formset = formset_cls(request.POST)
...
I like the closure solution for being “cleaner” and more Pythonic (so +1 to mmarshall answer) but Django forms also have a callback mechanism you can use for filtering querysets in formsets.
It’s also not documented, which I think is an indicator the Django devs might not like it as much.
So you basically create your formset the same but add the callback:
ServiceFormSet = forms.formsets.formset_factory(
ServiceForm, extra=3, formfield_callback=Callback('option', affiliate).cb)
This is creating an instance of a class that looks like this:
class Callback(object):
def __init__(self, field_name, aff):
self._field_name = field_name
self._aff = aff
def cb(self, field, **kwargs):
nf = field.formfield(**kwargs)
if field.name == self._field_name: # this is 'options' field
nf.queryset = ServiceOption.objects.filter(affiliate=self._aff)
return nf
This should give you the general idea. It’s a little more complex making the callback an object method like this, but gives you a little more flexibility as opposed to doing a simple function callback.
I would use functools.partial and functools.wraps:
from functools import partial, wraps
from django.forms.formsets import formset_factory
ServiceFormSet = formset_factory(wraps(ServiceForm)(partial(ServiceForm, affiliate=request.affiliate)), extra=3)
I think this is the cleanest approach, and doesn’t affect ServiceForm in any way (i.e. by making it difficult to subclass).
I wanted to place this as a comment to Carl Meyers answer, but since that requires points I just placed it here. This took me 2 hours to figure out so I hope it will help someone.
A note about using the inlineformset_factory.
I used that solution my self and it worked perfect, until I tried it with the inlineformset_factory. I was running Django 1.0.2 and got some strange KeyError exception. I upgraded to latest trunk and it worked direct.
I can now use it similar to this:
BookFormSet = inlineformset_factory(Author, Book, form=BookForm)
BookFormSet.form = staticmethod(curry(BookForm, user=request.user))
I spent some time trying to figure out this problem before I saw this posting.
The solution I came up with was the closure solution (and it is a solution I’ve used before with Django model forms).
I tried the curry() method as described above, but I just couldn’t get it to work with Django 1.0 so in the end I reverted to the closure method.
The closure method is very neat and the only slight oddness is that the class definition is nested inside the view or another function. I think the fact that this looks odd to me is a hangup from my previous programming experience and I think someone with a background in more dynamic languages wouldn’t bat an eyelid!
I had to do a similar thing. This is similar to the curry solution:
def form_with_my_variable(myvar):
class MyForm(ServiceForm):
def __init__(self, myvar=myvar, *args, **kwargs):
super(SeriveForm, self).__init__(myvar=myvar, *args, **kwargs)
return MyForm
factory = inlineformset_factory(..., form=form_with_my_variable(myvar), ... )
Carl Meyer’s solution looks very elegant. I tried implementing it for modelformsets. I was under the impression that I could not call staticmethods within a class, but the following inexplicably works:
class MyModel(models.Model):
myField = models.CharField(max_length=10)
class MyForm(ModelForm):
_request = None
class Meta:
model = MyModel
def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):
self._request = kwargs.pop('request', None)
super(MyForm,self).__init__(*args,**kwargs)
class MyFormsetBase(BaseModelFormSet):
_request = None
def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):
self._request = kwargs.pop('request', None)
subFormClass = self.form
self.form = curry(subFormClass,request=self._request)
super(MyFormsetBase,self).__init__(*args,**kwargs)
MyFormset = modelformset_factory(MyModel,formset=MyFormsetBase,extra=1,max_num=10,can_delete=True)
MyFormset.form = staticmethod(curry(MyForm,request=MyFormsetBase._request))
In my view, if I do something like this:
formset = MyFormset(request.POST,queryset=MyModel.objects.all(),request=request)
Then the “request” keyword gets propagated to all of the member forms of my formset. I’m pleased, but I have no idea why this is working – it seems wrong. Any suggestions?
I’m a newbie here so I can’t add comment. I hope this code will work too:
ServiceFormSet = formset_factory(ServiceForm, extra=3)
ServiceFormSet.formset = staticmethod(curry(ServiceForm, affiliate=request.affiliate))
as for adding additional parameters to the formset’s BaseFormSet instead of form.
As of commit e091c18f50266097f648efc7cac2503968e9d217 on Tue Aug 14 23:44:46 2012 +0200 the accepted solution can’t work anymore.
The current version of django.forms.models.modelform_factory() function uses a “type construction technique”, calling the type() function on the passed form to get the metaclass type, then using the result to construct a class-object of its type on the fly::
# Instatiate type(form) in order to use the same metaclass as form.
return type(form)(class_name, (form,), form_class_attrs)
This means even a curryed or partial object passed instead of a form “causes the duck to bite you” so to speak: it’ll call a function with the construction parameters of a ModelFormClass object, returning the error message::
function() argument 1 must be code, not str
To work around this I wrote a generator function that uses a closure to return a subclass of any class specified as first parameter, that then calls super.__init__ after updateing the kwargs with the ones supplied on the generator function’s call::
def class_gen_with_kwarg(cls, **additionalkwargs):
"""class generator for subclasses with additional 'stored' parameters (in a closure)
This is required to use a formset_factory with a form that need additional
initialization parameters (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/622982/django-passing-custom-form-parameters-to-formset)
"""
class ClassWithKwargs(cls):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
kwargs.update(additionalkwargs)
super(ClassWithKwargs, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
return ClassWithKwargs
Then in your code you’ll call the form factory as::
MyFormSet = inlineformset_factory(ParentModel, Model,form = class_gen_with_kwarg(MyForm, user=self.request.user))
caveats:
- this received very little testing, at least for now
- supplied parameters could clash and overwrite those used by whatever code will use the object returned by the constructor
This is what worked for me, Django 1.7:
from django.utils.functional import curry
lols = {'lols':'lols'}
formset = modelformset_factory(MyModel, form=myForm, extra=0)
formset.form = staticmethod(curry(MyForm, lols=lols))
return formset
#form.py
class MyForm(forms.ModelForm):
def __init__(self, lols, *args, **kwargs):
Hope it helps someone, took me long enough to figure it out 😉
Official Document Way
Django 2.0:
ArticleFormSet = formset_factory(MyArticleForm)
formset = ArticleFormSet(form_kwargs={'user': request.user})
based on this answer I found more clear solution:
class ServiceForm(forms.Form):
option = forms.ModelChoiceField(
queryset=ServiceOption.objects.filter(affiliate=self.affiliate))
rate = forms.DecimalField(widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
units = forms.IntegerField(min_value=1,
widget=custom_widgets.SmallField())
@staticmethod
def make_service_form(affiliate):
self.affiliate = affiliate
return ServiceForm
And run it in view like
formset_factory(form=ServiceForm.make_service_form(affiliate))