Django ModelForm - Create form from Models

ModelForm is a class that automatically generates a "form" from a Django model. It reduces boilerplate code by linking your form fields directly to your model fields, making form creation faster, cleaner, and less error-prone. It also provides built-in methods and validation to streamline form processing.

Example of converting a model into a Django Form?

To explain the working of the project, we will use project geeksforgeeks, create a model and map it to Django forms.

Refer to the following articles to check how to create a project and an app in Django.

• How to Create a Basic Project using MVT in Django?
• How to Create an App in Django ?

Step 1: Create the Model

In geeks/models.py, define a model as follows:

from django.db import models
 
class GeeksModel(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length = 200)
    description = models.TextField()
    last_modified = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add = True)
    img = models.ImageField(upload_to = "images/")

    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

This model has a title, description, timestamp, and an image.

Step 2: Register Your App

Before creating migrations, ensure the geeks app is added to the INSTALLED_APPS list in your project's settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
# other apps,
'geeks',
]

Step 3: Make Migrations and Migrate

Run the following commands to create and apply the migration for your model:

Python manage.py makemigrations
Python manage.py migrate

Step 4: Verify Model Creation

You can verify that the model is registered by visiting the Django admin interface:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/geeks/geeksmodel/add/

Step 5: Create the ModelForm

In geeks/forms.py, create a ModelForm class to automatically generate a form based on your model:

from django import forms
from .models import GeeksModel

class GeeksForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = GeeksModel
        fields = "__all__"

This form takes two arguments fields or exclude.

fields vs exclude

• fields: A list or special value '__all__' indicating which model fields should be included in the form. It is highly recommended to explicitly specify the fields to avoid potential security risks.
• exclude: A list of fields to exclude from the form. For example:

class PartialGeeksForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = GeeksModel
        exclude = ['img']

Step 6: Use the ModelForm in Your View

Update your view to instantiate and process the form data:

from django.shortcuts import render
from .forms import GeeksForm

def home_view(request):
    context ={}
    
    form = GeeksForm(request.POST or None, request.FILES or None)

    if form.is_valid():
        form.save()

    context['form']= form
    return render(request, "home.html", context)

Everything is set, Now visit "http://127.0.0.1:8000/",  Now you can see that every model field is mapped into a form field and displayed correspondingly. Field mappings are discussed later in this article. So now let's try entering data into the form and check if it gets saved into the database. 

Hit submit and Bingo the form gets saved automatically to database. We can verify it at:

http://localhost:8000/admin/geeks/geeksmodel/

Field types

The generated Form class will have a form field for every model field specified, in the order specified in the fields attribute. Each model field has a corresponding default form field. For example, a CharField on a model is represented as a CharField on a form. A model ManyToManyField is represented as a MultipleChoiceField. Here is the full list of conversions:

Read Next Article: Render Form Fields Manually