CODEWITHSUNDEEP
djangodjango-formsformset
Dijerydack
Dijerydack

Reputation: 43

Django formsets, How do I create an index of checkboxes for selecting db items to delete?

I have been RTFM for maybe three weeks solid and I cannot figure out how to do this. If I ever get good at this then I promise I will write a Django for Dummies book, the documentation is incomprehensible!

I have a simple note taking app with an index page that displays the title of each note in the database. I just want each item in the list to have a checkbox so you can select one or multiple notes and then press a delete button, redirect to an 'Are you sure you want to delete... "x, y and z" notes? page, with confirm or deny. Then back to the index list. Just like in the admin app.

I have deduced that I should need a modelformset layed out in a table as each object title and it's checkbox should constitute an individual form.

I have tried many approaches. The latest looks like this. It's not throwing any errors as it stands(I had a widgets attribute set in the forms.py function but it didn't like that. I took it out just to see if it would display something.) But it is not displaying anything at all. I also think the select_note_function should probably be a class instead. All the docs I can find explain CharFields and string inputs. I cant find a single fully fledged example of how to get widgets controlling the database.

forms.py:

from django import forms
from django.forms.models import modelformset_factory
from django.forms.widgets import CheckboxInput
from models import Note

def select_note_formset():
    SelectNote = modelformset_factory(Note)
    Form = modelformset_factory(
        Note,
        form=SelectNote,
        fields='title',

)

models.py:

def selection_index(request):
form = select_note_formset()
if request.method == 'POST':
    formset = form(request.POST)
    if formsest.is_valid():
        pass

else:
    formset=form
return render_to_response('select_index.html', {'formset':formset})

template:

<form method="post" action="">
  {{ formset.management_form }}
  <table>
    {% for form in formset %}
    {{ form }}
    {% endfor %}
  </table>
</form>

For all I know I could be barking up the totally wrong tree. If someone could spell this out I would appreciate it terribly!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1222

Answers (1)

Brenda J. Butler
Brenda J. Butler

Reputation: 1485

I have a gist for this, I just figured it out for myself last week:

https://gist.github.com/bjb/5717314

In a nutshell: make a new field type for a model that includes a hidden input for the model id and validates to the full model, put it in your form, and make a formset of these forms.

In my own search for the solution, people told me to use CheckboxSelectMultiple, but I didn't like that route because I would have had to put each model description into a single string. I wanted to list the model attributes as columns, and also (I haven't tried this yet) optionally show some related models after each model. So I wanted more control over the display than CheckboxSelectMultiple would have given me.

After a year or two you get the hang of the documentation ; -). Also, don't be afraid to read the source code of django.

Upvotes: 1

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