Django ModelChoiceField

Question

I'm new with Python and Django. I'd like to use combo box with ModelChoiceField like below.

school = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=School.objects.all())

The school object have a 'id', 'Name', 'Domain' fields but when I render the form in the html it show like below.

<label for="id_school">School:</label> 
<select id="id_school" name="school">
<option value="" selected="selected">---------</option>
<option value="3">School object</option>
</select>

I'd like to make the text from 'Name' field and make the first row to be selected. Also it would be great if you have any reference site some one like me!

Thanks!

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 23 '16 at 22:44

It shows School object because that's how the School objects are rendered. If you don't specify anything in School model then that's how django would render objects.

What you need to do is to define __str__ method for School model. The __str__() method is defined as:

The __str__() method is called whenever you call str() on an object. Django uses str(obj) in a number of places. Most notably, to display an object in the Django admin site and as the value inserted into a template when it displays an object. Thus, you should always return a nice, human-readable representation of the model from the __str__() method.

class School(models.Model):
    def __str__(self)
        return self.name

Django doc about __str__.

In python 2, can use unicode instead of str : def __unicode__(self): return "{0}".format(self.name) — HamzDiou, Jun 29 '21 at 09:23
For those who copy paste, this answer has a missing semicolon, def __str__(self): ... — HamzDiou, Jun 29 '21 at 09:25

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

3

If you want to have the first object selected by default then you should so something like that in your form model:

school = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=School.objects.all(), initial=0)

If you want to set the initial value from an instance of your model you can check accepted answer here SO accepted answer

edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

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answered Nov 23 '16 at 17:20

alexopoulos7

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Django ModelChoiceField

2 Answers2