Django forms, inheritance and order of form fields

Question

I\'m using Django forms in my website and would like to control the order of the fields.

Here\'s how I define my forms:

class edit_form(forms.Form):
         


        

Answer 1

From Django 1.9: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/ref/forms/api/#notes-on-field-ordering

---

Original answer: Django 1.9 will support this by default on the form with field_order:

class MyForm(forms.Form):
    ...
    field_order = ['field_1', 'field_2']
    ...

https://github.com/django/django/commit/28986da4ca167ae257abcaf7caea230eca2bcd80

Answer 2

From Django 1.9+

Django 1.9 adds a new Form attribute, field_order, allowing to order the field regardless their order of declaration in the class.

class MyForm(forms.Form):
    summary = forms.CharField()
    description = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextArea)
    author = forms.CharField()
    notes = form.CharField()

    field_order = ['author', 'summary']

Missing fields in field_order keep their order in the class and are appended after the ones specified in the list. The example above will produce the fields in this order: ['author', 'summary', 'description', 'notes']

See the documentation: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/forms/api/#notes-on-field-ordering

Up to Django 1.6

I had this same problem and I found another technique for reordering fields in the Django CookBook:

class EditForm(forms.Form):
    summary = forms.CharField()
    description = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextArea)


class CreateForm(EditForm):
    name = forms.CharField()

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(CreateForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields.keyOrder = ['name', 'summary', 'description']

Answer 3

I built a form 'ExRegistrationForm' inherited from the 'RegistrationForm' from Django-Registration-Redux. I faced two issues, one of which was reordering the fields on the html output page once the new form had been created.

I solved them as follows:

1. ISSUE 1: Remove Username from the Registration Form: In my_app.forms.py

    class ExRegistrationForm(RegistrationForm):
          #Below 2 lines extend the RegistrationForm with 2 new fields firstname & lastname
          first_name = forms.CharField(label=(u'First Name'))
          last_name = forms.CharField(label=(u'Last Name'))

          #Below 3 lines removes the username from the fields shown in the output of the this form
          def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
          super(ExRegistrationForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
          self.fields.pop('username')

2. ISSUE 2: Make FirstName and LastName appear on top: In templates/registration/registration_form.html

You can individually display the fields in the order that you want. This would help in case the number of fields are less, but not if you have a large number of fields where it becomes practically impossible to actually write them in the form.

     {% extends "base.html" %}
     {% load i18n %}

     {% block content %}
     <form method="post" action=".">
          {% csrf_token %}

          #The Default html is: {{ form.as_p }} , which can be broken down into individual elements as below for re-ordering.
          <p>First Name: {{ form.first_name }}</p>
          <p>Last Name:  {{ form.last_name }}</p>
          <p>Email: {{ form.email }}</p>
          <p>Password: {{ form.password1 }}</p>
          <p>Confirm Password: {{ form.password2 }}</p>

          <input type="submit" value="{% trans 'Submit' %}" />
      </form>
      {% endblock %}

Answer 4

It appears that at some point the underlying structure of field order was changed from a django specific SordedDict to a python standard OrderedDict

Thus, in 1.7 I had to do the following:

from collections import OrderedDict

class MyForm(forms.Form):

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(MyForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        original_fields = self.fields
        new_order = OrderedDict()
        for key in ['first', 'second', ... 'last']:
            new_order[key] = original_fields[key]
        self.fields = new_order

I'm sure someone could golf that into two or three lines, but for S.O. purposes I think clearly showing how it works is better than cleaver.

Answer 5

You could also create a decorator to order fields (inspired by Joshua's solution):

def order_fields(*field_list):
    def decorator(form):
        original_init = form.__init__
        def init(self, *args, **kwargs):
            original_init(self, *args, **kwargs)        
            for field in field_list[::-1]:
                self.fields.insert(0, field, self.fields.pop(field))
        form.__init__ = init
        return form            
    return decorator

This will ensure that all the fields passed to the decorator come first. You can use it like this:

@order_fields('name')
class CreateForm(EditForm):
    name = forms.CharField()