Django create view

Prerequisites

Django ModelForm

  • Django ModelForm is an advanced version of django Form.
  • ModelForm is associated with a django model.
  • Model form can generate auto form fields using form meta class
  • Can also define additional form fields.
  • Let's look at the code for model and model form.

my_app/models.py

from django.db import models

class Contact(models.Model):
    first_name = models.CharField(max_length=30)
    last_name = models.CharField(max_length=30)
    email = models.EmailField(max_length=255)
    phone = models.CharField(max_length=10, null=True)

    class Meta:
        db_table = "contact"

my_app/forms.py

from django import forms
from my_app.models import Contact

class ContactModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Contact
        fields = ['first_name', 'last_name', 'email']

  • form Meta class attributes

    • model: defines model name
    • fields: form fields to include

Form template

  • the template looks like below.

templates/form_template.html

<form action="" method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    {% csrf_token %}
    {{ form.as_table }}
    <input type="submit" value="submit" />
</form>

Django Create View

function based createview

  • use function based create view for simple functionality.
  • we will use contact model form for form validation.
  • Let's look at the create view code below.
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.shortcuts import render
from my_app.forms import ContactModelForm

def fbv_create_view(request):
    if request.method.lower() == "post":
        form = ContactModelForm(request.POST)
        if form.is_valid():
            instance = form.save()
            return HttpResponse(f"contact saved: {instance}")
    else:
        form = ContactModelForm()
    context = {'form': form}
    return render(request, 'form_template.html', context)

class based createview

  • Django comes with generic view CreateView
  • It handles the requests GET and POST
  • When a POST request is recieved then django generic view calls two methods form_valid and form_invalid after validating the requested data.
  • CreateView also has other methods like get_context_data, get_initial, etc.
  • For current functionality we just need to override form_valid method.
  • Let's look at the code below.
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.views.generic.edit import CreateView
from my_app.forms import ContactModelForm

class CBVCreateView(CreateView):
    form_class = ContactModelForm
    template_name = 'form_template.html'

    def form_valid(self, form):
        instance = form.save()
        return HttpResponse(f"contact saved: {instance}")

configure urls

  • open my_app/urls.py and add below code to it.
from django.urls import path
from my_app import views

urlpatterns = [
    # ...
    path('fbv_create_view', views.fbv_create_view, name='fbv_create_view'),
    path('cbv_create_view', views.CBVCreateView.as_view(), name='cbv_create_view'),
    # ...
]

References