Blog / 2010 / May / 14

Modifying HTML with Django ModelForm

May 14, 2010

Sometimes you need to modify the HTML produced for a Django Model Form, for example to specify the number of columns to show in a TextArea.

Starting from a simple form:

from django import forms

class XmlClassForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = XmlClass
        fields = ('name','maps_to','maintainable','description')

This uses the defaults for all the fields. To modify, simply re-declare the field and specify the widget with options:

class XmlClassForm(forms.ModelForm):
    name = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'size':50}))
    maps_to = forms.CharField(required=False, widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'size':50}))
    description = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea(attrs={'cols': 130, 'rows': 10}))
    class Meta:
        model = XmlClass
        fields = ('name','maps_to','maintainable','description')

Tags: django modelform