Get type of Django form widget from within template

Question

I\'m iterating through the fields of a form and for certain fields I want a slightly different layout, requiring altered HTML.

To do this accurately, I just need to

Answer 1

Following the answer from Oli and rinti: I used this one and I think it is a bit simpler:

template code: {{ field|fieldtype }}

filter code:

from django import template
register = template.Library()

@register.filter('fieldtype')
def fieldtype(field):
    return field.field.widget.__class__.__name__

Answer 2

You can make every view that manages forms inherit from a custom generic view where you load into the context the metadata that you need in the templates. The generic form view should include something like this:

class CustomUpdateView(UpdateView):
    ...
    def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
       context = super().get_context_data(**kwargs)
       ...
       for f, value in context["form"].fields.items():
          context["form"].fields[f].type = self.model._meta.get_field(f).get_internal_type()
       ...
       return context

In the template you can access these custom properties through field.field:

{% if field.field.type == 'BooleanField' %}
     <div class="custom-control custom-checkbox">
     ...
     </div>
{% endif %}

By using the debugger of PyCharm or Visual Studio Code you can see all the available metadata, if you need something else besides the field type.

Answer 3

Following up on the accepted answer - the enhanced if tag in Django 1.2 allows you to use filters in if tag comparisons. So you could now do your custom html/logic in the template like so:

<ul>
{% for field in form.fields %}
  <li>
    {% if field.field.widget|klass == "Textarea" %}
    <!-- do something special for Textarea -->
    <h2>Text Areas are Special </h2>
    {% else %}      
      {{ field.errors }}
      {{ field.label_tag }}
      {{ field }}
    {% endif %}

  </li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>

Answer 4

Perhaps worth pointing out to contemporary readers that django-widget-tweaks provides field_type and widget_type template filters for this purpose, returning the respective class names in lowercase. In the example below I also show the output of the input_type property on the field widget (since Django 1.11), which may also be useful.

forms.py:

class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    name = forms.CharField(
        max_length=150,
        required=True,
        label='Your name'
    )

template.html:

{% load widget_tweaks %}

{% for field in form.visible_fields %}
{{ field.label }}
{{ field.field.widget.input_type }}
{{ field|field_type }}
{{ field|widget_type }})
{% endfor %}

Result:

Your name
text
charfield
textinput

Between these various options you should be able to find the right property to target for just about any use-case. If you need to capture the output of one of these filters for use in if statements, you can use the with template tag.

Answer 5

As of Django 1.11, you can just use widget.input_type. Example:

{% for field in form.visible_fields %}
    <input type="{{ field.field.widget.input_type }}"
           id="{{ field.id_for_label }}"
           name="{{ field.html_name }}"
           placeholder="{{ field.label }}"
           maxlength="{{ field.field.max_length }}" />
{% endfor %}

Answer 6

Making a template tag might work? Something like field.field.widget|widget_type

Edit from Oli: Good point! I just wrote a filter:

from django import template
register = template.Library()

@register.filter('klass')
def klass(ob):
    return ob.__class__.__name__

And now {{ object|klass }} renders correctly. Now I've just got to figure out how to use that inside a template's if statement.

Edit from Oli #2: I needed to use the result of that in an if statetement in-template, so I just shifted all that logic into the templatetag. Magic. Thanks for poking me in the right direction.