Default value for Django choices field

Question

Suppose class Photo is to hold photos having choice fields and other attributes:

class Photo(models.Model):
    ONLYME = 'O'
    FRIENDS = 'F'
    PUBLIC = 'P'
    CHOICES = (
        (ONLYME, "Me"),
        (FRIENDS, "Friends"),
        (PUBLIC, "Public"),
    )

    display = models.CharField(max_length=1, choices=CHOICES, blank=True, null=True)
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    description = models.TextField()
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True, auto_now_add=False)
    update = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=False, auto_now_add=True)
    image = models.ImageField(upload_to=get_upload_file_name, blank=True)

Now, how do I set the default or initial value of a photo to "Friends" in the display attribute?

Drewness · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-07T18:23:37.240

23

Use the default attribute:

display = models.CharField(..., default=FRIENDS)

or

display = models.CharField(..., default=CHOICES[1][1])

edited Mar 07 '14 at 18:23

answered Mar 07 '14 at 18:18

Drewness

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score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 01 '16 at 12:08

3

You could just set the default attribute:

display = models.CharField(default='F', max_length=1, choices=CHOICES, blank=True, null=True)

Reference.

edited Aug 01 '16 at 12:08

Rohan Khude

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answered Mar 07 '14 at 18:17

signal

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 17 '23 at 17:55

There is a ChoiceField attribute for RadioButtons, then the solution could be with "initial" attribute... Example:

from django import forms
        CHOICES = [("1", "First choice"), ("2", "Second choice")]
    
    class ContactForm(forms.Form):
        choice_field = forms.ChoiceField(widget=forms.RadioSelect, choices=CHOICES, initial="1")

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 19 '23 at 02:27

Note that this is an old question. As of Django 3.0 the canonical way is to use the models.TextChoices class.

The following is an example that uses the Enum functional api:

CHOICES = models.TextChoices(
    "Display", (
        ("O", "Me"),
        ("F", "Friends"),
        ("P", "Public"),
    )
)

You can then write

display = models.CharField(
    max_length=1, choices=CHOICES, default=CHOICES.F, blank=True, null=True
)

Default value for Django choices field

4 Answers4

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