Multi-Object-Edit With Django FormSets

Thu 09 July 2009 · code · Tags:

django

I had to write a multi-object edit table the other day for a Django project and as such I dove into the FormSet Documentation. Django's documentation is really good usually but the part abut the FormSets was a bit of a letdown.

So in case anybody else is in the same situation here is some code of how I did it (written from memory - should still be okay I hope).

# forms.py
from django.forms.models import modelformset_factory

# creating a FormSet for a specific Model is easy
FooFormSetBase = modelformset_factory(
    Foo,
    extra=0,
    fields=('somefield', 'someotherfield')
)

# now we want to add a checkbox so we can do stuff to only selected items
class FooFormSet(FooFormSetBase):
    # this is where you can add additional fields to a ModelFormSet
    # this is also where you can change stuff about the auto generated form
    def add_fields(self, form, index):
        super(TracImportTestcaseFormSet, self).add_fields(form, index)
        form.fields['is_checked'] = forms.BooleanField(required=False)
        form.fields['somefield'].widget.attrs['class'] = 'somefieldclass'

After writing the FormSet itself here is the view:

# views.py
from django.shortcuts import redirect
from django.template import RequestContext
from fooproject.fooapp.forms import FooFormSet

def fooview(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        # we have multiple actions - save and delete in this case
        action = request.POST.get('action')
        formset = FooFormSet(
            request.POST,
            queryset=Foo.objects.all()
        )

        if formset.is_valid():
            if action == u'save'
                for form in formset.forms:
                    if form.cleaned_data.get('is_checked'):
                        form.save(commit=False).delete()

            elif action == u'delete':
                if formset.is_valid():

            redirect('someview')

    else:
        formset = FooFormSet(
            queryset=Foo.objects.all()
        )

    return render_to_response('sometemplate.html', {
        'formset': formset,
    }, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Now all that's missing is the template:

<form action="." method="post" accept-charset="utf-8">
    <table>
        <thead>
            <tr>
                <th>is_checked</th>
                <th>somefield</th>
                <th>someotherfield</th>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
        {% for form in formset.forms %}
            <tr>
                <td>
                    {# don't forget about the id field #}
                    {{ form.id }}
                    {{ form.is_checked }}
                </td>
                <td>{{ form.somefield }}</td>
                <td>{{ form.someotherfield }}</td>
            </tr>
        {% endfor %}        
        </tbody>
    </table>
    <p>
        {# and don't forget about the management form #}
        {{ formset.management_form }}
        <button type="submit" name="action" value="save">{% chunk "save" %}</button>
        <button type="submit" name="action" value="delete">{% chunk "delete" %}</button>
    </p>
</form>

Of course there is stuff still missing - you won't see errors in your form for example. But you get the general idea.

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