Using Django Forms to display and edit?

Question

I\'m wrestling with how to best create HTML pages in Django that can either be used for displaying or editing data. That is, I\'d like the field\'s values to appear as text in d

Answer 1

Answering my own question, apparently. I ended up with a three-part solution:

1. attach the model to the form, so I'll have the default display widgets for each field
2. write the form using a template tag, passing it the form.field, user, and action
3. write a render template tag to handle #2

Step one:

form.model = Model(...)

Step two:

 {{form.field1.label}}
 {% render form.field1 user action %}


 {{form.field2.label}}
 {% render form.field2 user action %}

Step three:

Something like:

def render(formfield, user, action, default_text="Private"):
    if not user.is_authenticated():
        action = "view"
    if action == "view":
        if user.is_authenticated():
            fieldname = formfield.name 
            retval = str(getattr(formfield.form.model, fieldname))
        else:
            retval = default_text
    else:
        retval = formfield.as_widget()
    return retval