In a Django form, how do I make a field readonly (or disabled) so that it cannot be edited?

Question

In a Django form, how do I make a field read-only (or disabled)?

When the form is being used to create a new entry, all fields should be enabled - but when the recor

Answer 1

One simple option is to just type form.instance.fieldName in the template instead of form.fieldName.

Answer 2

awalker's answer helped me a lot!

I've changed his example to work with Django 1.3, using get_readonly_fields.

Usually you should declare something like this in app/admin.py:

class ItemAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    ...
    readonly_fields = ('url',)

I've adapted in this way:

# In the admin.py file
class ItemAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    ...
    def get_readonly_fields(self, request, obj=None):
        if obj:
            return ['url']
        else:
            return []

And it works fine. Now if you add an Item, the url field is read-write, but on change it becomes read-only.

Answer 3

Is this the simplest way?

Right in a view code something like this:

def resume_edit(request, r_id):
    .....    
    r = Resume.get.object(pk=r_id)
    resume = ResumeModelForm(instance=r)
    .....
    resume.fields['email'].widget.attrs['readonly'] = True 
    .....
    return render(request, 'resumes/resume.html', context)

It works fine!

Answer 4

You can elegantly add readonly in the widget:

class SurveyModaForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model  = Survey
        fields = ['question_no']
        widgets = {
        'question_no':forms.NumberInput(attrs={'class':'form-control','readonly':True}),
        }

Answer 5

Setting readonly on a widget only makes the input in the browser read-only. Adding a clean_sku which returns instance.sku ensures the field value will not change on form level.

def clean_sku(self):
    if self.instance: 
        return self.instance.sku
    else: 
        return self.fields['sku']

This way you can use model's (unmodified save) and avoid getting the field required error.

Answer 6

I think your best option would just be to include the readonly attribute in your template rendered in a <span> or <p> rather than include it in the form if it's readonly.

Forms are for collecting data, not displaying it. That being said, the options to display in a readonly widget and scrub POST data are fine solutions.