Overriding init for a form and setting the checkbox disabled and using initial=True

Question

I have a form where I am overriding the init so I can set some checkboxes to be disabled, these disabled checkboxes are pre-checked.

class HomePhoneBundleOrderForm(forms.Form):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
    super(HomePhoneBundleOrderForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    self.fields['telephone_line'].widget.attrs['disabled'] = 'disabled'
    self.fields['voice_mail'].widget.attrs['disabled'] = 'disabled'

telephone_line = forms.BooleanField(initial=True, help_text="Local telephone line included.")
voice_mail = forms.BooleanField(label="", help_text="Voicemail – included in this bundle.", initial=True)

The problem is when I submit this form, even when they are pre-checked, the form gives me an error saying that the field is required and then the checkbox becomes unchecked. Can you anyone give me some help as to why and how to fix this?

Thanks

-J

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 25 '11 at 00:14

Here's another option that will work for both single Forms as well as Formsets. @sandinymyjoints links to a good post and the accepted answer there is certainly well thought out. But hacking Request parameters can lead to a lot of trouble as a general rule. As a specific case, hacking the POST of a formset submission involves regex and that's really ugly. In a Formset (remember that they are collections of Forms), your forms will POST as form-0-telephone_line and form-0-voice_mail and such. Try this instead.

In your Form class define two fields - a visible one to look good and a hidden one to carry the data. The visible checkbox will be disabled and thus will never POST (as you well know), but it will give clear visual indication to the user what is happening. The hidden checkbox will hold your initial True checked status.

class HomePhoneBundleOrderForm(forms.Form):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(HomePhoneBundleOrderForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['telephone_line_visible'].widget.attrs['disabled'] = 'disabled'

    telephone_line = forms.BooleanField(initial=True,
                                        widget=forms.HiddenInput)
    telephone_line_visible = forms.BooleanField(initial=True,
                                                required=False,
                                                label="Telephone line",
                                                help_text="Local telephone line included.")

Or if you want to keep the "hack" code entirely in one location:

def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(HomePhoneBundleOrderForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        # Hack
        self.fields['telephone_line'].widget=forms.HiddenInput()
        self.fields['telephone_line_visible'] = forms.BooleanField(initial=True,
                                                                   required=False,
                                                                   label="Telephone line",
                                                                   help_text="Local telephone line included.")
        self.fields['telephone_line_visible'].widget.attrs['disabled'] = 'disabled'

@JeffC would you mind giving me a +1? It's proper etiquette to upvote helpful answers. — JCotton, Aug 26 '11 at 01:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

0

I think you are having the same problem as this: disabled field is not passed through - workaround needed

"Since you are disabling the widget and not the field, as far as the form is concerned it's always receiving nothing for fieldA and that will always fail validation."

See the accepted answer to that question for some possible solutions. Looks like the best one involves modifying POST to put the value you want into the fields.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

Community

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answered Aug 24 '11 at 17:08

sandinmyjoints

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Looks like the only solution in my example is by hacking request.POST, but that's a big ugly solution considering I have a ton of possible options, the self.instance hack would work but that would assume I am using modelforms. This is ugly, is there any other way to accomplish this? – JeffC Aug 24 '11 at 18:05

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 24 '11 at 18:41

You could try enabling them on the client side before submitting with javascript/jQuery, something similar to this:

//enable disabled fields so they would get submitted with the request
$('#form').submit(function() {
    $('input,select', this).prop('disabled', '');
    return true;
});

Overriding __init__ for a form and setting the checkbox disabled and using initial=True

3 Answers3

Overriding init for a form and setting the checkbox disabled and using initial=True