Change a Django form field to a hidden field

Question:

I have a Django form with a RegexField, which is very similar to a normal text input field.

In my view, under certain conditions I want to hide it from the user, and trying to keep the form as similar as possible. What’s the best way to turn this field into a HiddenInput field?

I know I can set attributes on the field with:

form['fieldname'].field.widget.attr['readonly'] = 'readonly'

And I can set the desired initial value with:

form.initial['fieldname'] = 'mydesiredvalue'

However, that won’t change the form of the widget.

What’s the best / most “django-y” / least “hacky” way to make this field a <input type="hidden"> field?

Asked By: Amandasaurus

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Answers:

If you have a custom template and view you may exclude the field and use {{ modelform.instance.field }} to get the value.

also you may prefer to use in the view:

field = form.fields['field_name']
field.widget = field.hidden_widget()

but I’m not sure it will protect save method on post.

edit: field with multiple values don’t supports HiddenInput as input type, so use default hidden input widget for this field instead.

Hope it helps.

Answered By: christophe31

Firstly, if you don’t want the user to modify the data, then it seems cleaner to simply exclude the field. Including it as a hidden field just adds more data to send over the wire and invites a malicious user to modify it when you don’t want them to. If you do have a good reason to include the field but hide it, you can pass a keyword arg to the modelform’s constructor. Something like this perhaps:

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        from django.forms.widgets import HiddenInput
        hide_condition = kwargs.pop('hide_condition',None)
        super(MyModelForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        if hide_condition:
            self.fields['fieldname'].widget = HiddenInput()
            # or alternately:  del self.fields['fieldname']  to remove it from the form altogether.

Then in your view:

form = MyModelForm(hide_condition=True)

I prefer this approach to modifying the modelform’s internals in the view, but it’s a matter of taste.

Answered By: rych

This may also be useful: {{ form.field.as_hidden }}

Answered By: semente

an option that worked for me, define the field in the original form as:

forms.CharField(widget = forms.HiddenInput(), required = False)

then when you override it in the new Class it will keep it’s place.

Answered By: Shay Rybak

For normal form you can do

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
    slug = forms.CharField(widget=forms.HiddenInput())

If you have model form you can do the following

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = TagStatus
        fields = ('slug', 'ext')
        widgets = {'slug': forms.HiddenInput()}

You can also override __init__ method

class Myform(forms.Form):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(Myform, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['slug'].widget = forms.HiddenInput()
Answered By: anjaneyulubatta505

You can just use css :

#id_fieldname, label[for="id_fieldname"] {
  position: absolute;
  display: none
}

This will make the field and its label invisible.

Answered By: user20310

If you want the field to always be hidden, use the following:

class MyForm(forms.Form):
    hidden_input = forms.CharField(widget=forms.HiddenInput(), initial="value")

If you want the field to be conditionally hidden, you can do the following:

form = MyForm()
if condition:
    form.fields["field_name"].widget = forms.HiddenInput()
    form.fields["field_name"].initial = "value"
Answered By: Zags

Example of a model:

models.py

from django.db import models


class YourModel(models.Model):
    fieldname = models.CharField(max_length=255, default="default")

In your form, you can add widgets with ModelForm. To make it hidden add 'type': 'hidden' as shown below

forms.py

from .models import YourModel
from django import forms


class YourForm(forms.ModelForm):


    class Meta:
        model = YourModel
        fields = ('fieldname',)

        widgets = {
            'fieldname': forms.TextInput(attrs={'type': 'hidden'}),
        }

If you don’t know how to add it to your views.py file, here is some videos about it.

If you use Function Based View:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oOHlcHkX2U


If you use Class Based View:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB_wDXBwhUA

Answered By: AnonymousUser
{{ form.field}}
{{ form.field.as_hidden }}

with this jinja format we can have both visible form fields and hidden ones too.

Answered By: Ignatious varghese

if you want to hide and disable the field to protect the data inside. as others mentioned use the hiddenInput widget and make it disable

in your form init

example:

        if not current_user.is_staff:
           self.base_fields['pictureValid'].disabled = True
           self.base_fields['pictureValid'].widget = forms.HiddenInput()
Answered By: Amir jodat

With render_field is easy
{% render_field form.field hidden=True %}

Answered By: Juan Diego Ramirez
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