Using forms with non-string objects

Question

I have pretty complicated form items ;)

Here's my view for serving my form:

def view(request):
    if request.method == "POST":
        form = forms.ProfileEditForm(request.POST)
    else:
        form = forms.ProfileEditForm(initial={'country': request.user.profile.country})

    return direct_to_template(request, "name/of/template.html", 
            {"form": form, "countries": Country.objects.all()})

Here's what the country model looks like:

class Country(models.Model):
    iso2 = models.CharField()
    iso3 = models.CharField()
    name = models.CharField()

Here's what my form's clean() method looks like (highly simplified):

def clean(self):
    self.cleaned_data['country'] = Country.objects.get(iso2=self.cleaned_data['country'])
    return self.cleaned_data

Here's how I'm rendering it in a template:

<select name="country"{% if form.country.value %} data-initialvalue="{{form.country.value.iso2}}"{% endif %}>
    {% for country in countries %}
    <option value="{{country.iso2}}"{% if country.iso2==form.country.value.iso2 %} selected{% endif %}>{{country.name}}</option>
    {% endfor %}
</select>

However, I'm noticing that what actually ends up being delivered to my template isn't a Country object, but a string of my input data, such as "US". When I initially render my template with the initial data, things look fine, but when validation fails, things get messed up. What should I do, and what am I doing wrong?

DrTyrsa · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-05 08:11:14Z

1

Just use ModelChoiceField for your country field.

And don't forget to define __unicode__ method of the model.

edited Dec 5, 2011 at 8:11

answered Dec 5, 2011 at 8:00

DrTyrsa

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5 Comments

Naftuli Kay Over a year ago

Actually, for my current setup ModelChoiceField won't give me exactly what I need. I'm not using the PKs to pass around the value, as I need to use the two-letter country code when passing the values.

DrTyrsa Over a year ago

@TK Kocheran And why not to use your two-letter country code as pk?

Naftuli Kay Over a year ago

...because I'm already using my PK as the UN assigned country code for each country.

DrTyrsa Over a year ago

@TK Kocheran I don't think I understand well your task. Why can't you use pk for select's value?

Naftuli Kay Over a year ago

By looking at the source, I think there's a way it would work... thanks for the tip!

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