A widget is Django’s representation of an HTML input element. The widget\nhandles the rendering of the HTML, and the extraction of data from a GET/POST\ndictionary that corresponds to the widget.
\n\nWhenever you specify a field on a form, Django will use a default widget\nthat is appropriate to the type of data that is to be displayed. To find\nwhich widget is used on which field, see the documentation about\nBuilt-in Field classes.
\nHowever, if you want to use a different widget for a field, you can\njust use the widget argument on the field definition. For\nexample:
from django import forms\n\nclass CommentForm(forms.Form):\n name = forms.CharField()\n url = forms.URLField()\n comment = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)\nThis would specify a form with a comment that uses a larger Textarea\nwidget, rather than the default TextInput widget.
Many widgets have optional extra arguments; they can be set when defining the\nwidget on the field. In the following example, the\nyears attribute is set for a\nSelectDateWidget:
from django import forms\n\nBIRTH_YEAR_CHOICES = ('1980', '1981', '1982')\nFAVORITE_COLORS_CHOICES = (\n ('blue', 'Blue'),\n ('green', 'Green'),\n ('black', 'Black'),\n)\n\nclass SimpleForm(forms.Form):\n birth_year = forms.DateField(widget=forms.SelectDateWidget(years=BIRTH_YEAR_CHOICES))\n favorite_colors = forms.MultipleChoiceField(\n required=False,\n widget=forms.CheckboxSelectMultiple,\n choices=FAVORITE_COLORS_CHOICES,\n )\nSee the Built-in widgets for more information about which widgets\nare available and which arguments they accept.
\nSelect widgetLink to this heading#Widgets inheriting from the Select widget deal with choices. They\npresent the user with a list of options to choose from. The different widgets\npresent this choice differently; the Select widget itself uses a\n<select> HTML list representation, while RadioSelect uses radio\nbuttons.
Select widgets are used by default on ChoiceField fields. The\nchoices displayed on the widget are inherited from the ChoiceField and\nchanging ChoiceField.choices will update Select.choices. For\nexample:
>>> from django import forms\n>>> CHOICES = (('1', 'First',), ('2', 'Second',))\n>>> choice_field = forms.ChoiceField(widget=forms.RadioSelect, choices=CHOICES)\n>>> choice_field.choices\n[('1', 'First'), ('2', 'Second')]\n>>> choice_field.widget.choices\n[('1', 'First'), ('2', 'Second')]\n>>> choice_field.widget.choices = ()\n>>> choice_field.choices = (('1', 'First and only',),)\n>>> choice_field.widget.choices\n[('1', 'First and only')]\nWidgets which offer a choices attribute can however be used\nwith fields which are not based on choice – such as a CharField –\nbut it is recommended to use a ChoiceField-based field when the\nchoices are inherent to the model and not just the representational widget.
When Django renders a widget as HTML, it only renders very minimal markup -\nDjango doesn’t add class names, or any other widget-specific attributes. This\nmeans, for example, that all TextInput widgets will appear the same\non your Web pages.
There are two ways to customize widgets: per widget instance and per widget class.
\nIf you want to make one widget instance look different from another, you will\nneed to specify additional attributes at the time when the widget object is\ninstantiated and assigned to a form field (and perhaps add some rules to your\nCSS files).
\nFor example, take the following simple form:
\nfrom django import forms\n\nclass CommentForm(forms.Form):\n name = forms.CharField()\n url = forms.URLField()\n comment = forms.CharField()\nThis form will include three default TextInput widgets, with default\nrendering – no CSS class, no extra attributes. This means that the input boxes\nprovided for each widget will be rendered exactly the same:
>>> f = CommentForm(auto_id=False)\n>>> f.as_table()\n<tr><th>Name:</th><td><input type="text" name="name" required /></td></tr>\n<tr><th>Url:</th><td><input type="url" name="url" required /></td></tr>\n<tr><th>Comment:</th><td><input type="text" name="comment" required /></td></tr>\nOn a real Web page, you probably don’t want every widget to look the same. You\nmight want a larger input element for the comment, and you might want the\n“name” widget to have some special CSS class. It is also possible to specify\nthe “type” attribute to take advantage of the new HTML5 input types. To do\nthis, you use the Widget.attrs argument when creating the widget:
class CommentForm(forms.Form):\n name = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'class': 'special'}))\n url = forms.URLField()\n comment = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'size': '40'}))\nDjango will then include the extra attributes in the rendered output:
\n>>> f = CommentForm(auto_id=False)\n>>> f.as_table()\n<tr><th>Name:</th><td><input type="text" name="name" class="special" required /></td></tr>\n<tr><th>Url:</th><td><input type="url" name="url" required /></td></tr>\n<tr><th>Comment:</th><td><input type="text" name="comment" size="40" required /></td></tr>\nYou can also set the HTML id using attrs. See\nBoundField.id_for_label for an example.
With widgets, it is possible to add assets (css and javascript)\nand more deeply customize their appearance and behavior.
In a nutshell, you will need to subclass the widget and either\ndefine a «Media» inner class or\ncreate a «media» property.
\nThese methods involve somewhat advanced Python programming and are described in\ndetail in the Form Assets topic guide.
\nBase widget classes Widget and MultiWidget are subclassed by\nall the built-in widgets and may serve as a\nfoundation for custom widgets.
WidgetLink to this heading#This abstract class cannot be rendered, but provides the basic attribute\nattrs. You may also implement or override the\nrender() method on custom widgets.
A dictionary containing HTML attributes to be set on the rendered\nwidget.
\n>>> from django import forms\n>>> name = forms.TextInput(attrs={'size': 10, 'title': 'Your name',})\n>>> name.render('name', 'A name')\n'<input title="Your name" type="text" name="name" value="A name" size="10" required />'\nIf you assign a value of True or False to an attribute,\nit will be rendered as an HTML5 boolean attribute:
>>> name = forms.TextInput(attrs={'required': True})\n>>> name.render('name', 'A name')\n'<input name="name" type="text" value="A name" required />'\n>>>\n>>> name = forms.TextInput(attrs={'required': False})\n>>> name.render('name', 'A name')\n'<input name="name" type="text" value="A name" />'\nAn attribute that defaults to True. If set to False, the\nmicroseconds part of datetime and\ntime values will be set to 0.
Cleans and returns a value for use in the widget template. value\nisn’t guaranteed to be valid input, therefore subclass implementations\nshould program defensively.
Returns the HTML ID attribute of this widget for use by a <label>,\ngiven the ID of the field. Returns None if an ID isn’t available.
This hook is necessary because some widgets have multiple HTML\nelements and, thus, multiple IDs. In that case, this method should\nreturn an ID value that corresponds to the first ID in the widget’s\ntags.
\nReturns HTML for the widget, as a Unicode string. This method must be\nimplemented by the subclass, otherwise NotImplementedError will be\nraised.
The “value” given is not guaranteed to be valid input, therefore\nsubclass implementations should program defensively.
\nGiven a dictionary of data and this widget’s name, returns the value\nof this widget. files may contain data coming from\nrequest.FILES. Returns None\nif a value wasn’t provided. Note also that value_from_datadict may\nbe called more than once during handling of form data, so if you\ncustomize it and add expensive processing, you should implement some\ncaching mechanism yourself.
Given data and files dictionaries and this widget’s name,\nreturns whether or not there’s data or files for the widget.
The method’s result affects whether or not a field in a model form\nfalls back to its default.
\nSpecial cases are CheckboxInput,\nCheckboxSelectMultiple, and\nSelectMultiple, which always return\nFalse because an unchecked checkbox and unselected\n<select multiple> don’t appear in the data of an HTML form\nsubmission, so it’s unknown whether or not the user submitted a value.
Given a form field’s initial value, returns whether or not the\nwidget can be rendered with the required HTML attribute. Forms use\nthis method along with Field.required and Form.use_required_attribute to determine whether or not\nto display the required attribute for each field.
By default, returns False for hidden widgets and True\notherwise. Special cases are ClearableFileInput,\nwhich returns False when initial is not set, and\nCheckboxSelectMultiple, which always returns\nFalse because browser validation would require all checkboxes to be\nchecked instead of at least one.
Override this method in custom widgets that aren’t compatible with\nbrowser validation. For example, a WSYSIWG text editor widget backed by\na hidden textarea element may want to always return False to\navoid browser validation on the hidden field.
MultiWidgetLink to this heading#A widget that is composed of multiple widgets.\nMultiWidget works hand in hand with the\nMultiValueField.
MultiWidget has one required argument:
An iterable containing the widgets needed.
\nAnd one required method:
\nThis method takes a single «compressed» value from the field and\nreturns a list of «decompressed» values. The input value can be\nassumed valid, but not necessarily non-empty.
\nThis method must be implemented by the subclass, and since the\nvalue may be empty, the implementation must be defensive.
\nThe rationale behind «decompression» is that it is necessary to «split»\nthe combined value of the form field into the values for each widget.
\nAn example of this is how SplitDateTimeWidget turns a\ndatetime value into a list with date and time split\ninto two separate values:
from django.forms import MultiWidget\n\nclass SplitDateTimeWidget(MultiWidget):\n\n # ...\n\n def decompress(self, value):\n if value:\n return [value.date(), value.time().replace(microsecond=0)]\n return [None, None]\nOther methods that may be useful to override include:
\nArgument value is handled differently in this method from the\nsubclasses of Widget because it has to figure out how to\nsplit a single value for display in multiple widgets.
The value argument used when rendering can be one of two things:
A list.
A single value (e.g., a string) that is the «compressed» representation\nof a list of values.
If value is a list, the output of render() will\nbe a concatenation of rendered child widgets. If value is not a\nlist, it will first be processed by the method\ndecompress() to create the list and then rendered.
When render() executes its HTML rendering, each value in the list\nis rendered with the corresponding widget – the first value is\nrendered in the first widget, the second value is rendered in the\nsecond widget, etc.
Unlike in the single value widgets, method render()\nneed not be implemented in the subclasses.
Given a list of rendered widgets (as strings), returns a Unicode string\nrepresenting the HTML for the whole lot.
\nThis hook allows you to format the HTML design of the widgets any way\nyou’d like.
\nHere’s an example widget which subclasses MultiWidget to display\na date with the day, month, and year in different select boxes. This widget\nis intended to be used with a DateField rather than\na MultiValueField, thus we have implemented\nvalue_from_datadict():
from datetime import date\nfrom django.forms import widgets\n\nclass DateSelectorWidget(widgets.MultiWidget):\n def __init__(self, attrs=None):\n # create choices for days, months, years\n # example below, the rest snipped for brevity.\n years = [(year, year) for year in (2011, 2012, 2013)]\n _widgets = (\n widgets.Select(attrs=attrs, choices=days),\n widgets.Select(attrs=attrs, choices=months),\n widgets.Select(attrs=attrs, choices=years),\n )\n super(DateSelectorWidget, self).__init__(_widgets, attrs)\n\n def decompress(self, value):\n if value:\n return [value.day, value.month, value.year]\n return [None, None, None]\n\n def format_output(self, rendered_widgets):\n return ''.join(rendered_widgets)\n\n def value_from_datadict(self, data, files, name):\n datelist = [\n widget.value_from_datadict(data, files, name + '_%s' % i)\n for i, widget in enumerate(self.widgets)]\n try:\n D = date(\n day=int(datelist[0]),\n month=int(datelist[1]),\n year=int(datelist[2]),\n )\n except ValueError:\n return ''\n else:\n return str(D)\nThe constructor creates several Select widgets in a tuple. The\nsuper class uses this tuple to setup the widget.
The format_output() method is fairly vanilla here (in\nfact, it’s the same as what’s been implemented as the default for\nMultiWidget), but the idea is that you could add custom HTML between\nthe widgets should you wish.
The required method decompress() breaks up a\ndatetime.date value into the day, month, and year values corresponding\nto each widget. Note how the method handles the case where value is\nNone.
The default implementation of value_from_datadict() returns\na list of values corresponding to each Widget. This is appropriate\nwhen using a MultiWidget with a MultiValueField,\nbut since we want to use this widget with a DateField\nwhich takes a single value, we have overridden this method to combine the\ndata of all the subwidgets into a datetime.date. The method extracts\ndata from the POST dictionary and constructs and validates the date.\nIf it is valid, we return the string, otherwise, we return an empty string\nwhich will cause form.is_valid to return False.
Django provides a representation of all the basic HTML widgets, plus some\ncommonly used groups of widgets in the django.forms.widgets module,\nincluding the input of text, various checkboxes\nand selectors, uploading files,\nand handling of multi-valued input.
These widgets make use of the HTML elements input and textarea.
TextInputLink to this heading#Text input: <input type="text" ...>
NumberInputLink to this heading#Text input: <input type="number" ...>
Beware that not all browsers support entering localized numbers in\nnumber input types. Django itself avoids using them for fields having\ntheir localize property set to True.
EmailInputLink to this heading#Text input: <input type="email" ...>
URLInputLink to this heading#Text input: <input type="url" ...>
PasswordInputLink to this heading#Password input: <input type='password' ...>
Takes one optional argument:
\nDetermines whether the widget will have a value filled in when the\nform is re-displayed after a validation error (default is False).
DateInputLink to this heading#Date input as a simple text box: <input type='text' ...>
Takes same arguments as TextInput, with one more optional argument:
The format in which this field’s initial value will be displayed.
\nIf no format argument is provided, the default format is the first\nformat found in DATE_INPUT_FORMATS and respects\nFormat localization.
DateTimeInputLink to this heading#Date/time input as a simple text box: <input type='text' ...>
Takes same arguments as TextInput, with one more optional argument:
The format in which this field’s initial value will be displayed.
\nIf no format argument is provided, the default format is the first\nformat found in DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS and respects\nFormat localization.
By default, the microseconds part of the time value is always set to 0.\nIf microseconds are required, use a subclass with the\nsupports_microseconds attribute set to True.
TimeInputLink to this heading#Time input as a simple text box: <input type='text' ...>
Takes same arguments as TextInput, with one more optional argument:
The format in which this field’s initial value will be displayed.
\nIf no format argument is provided, the default format is the first\nformat found in TIME_INPUT_FORMATS and respects\nFormat localization.
For the treatment of microseconds, see DateTimeInput.
TextareaLink to this heading#Text area: <textarea>...</textarea>
CheckboxInputLink to this heading#Checkbox: <input type='checkbox' ...>
Takes one optional argument:
\nA callable that takes the value of the CheckboxInput and returns\nTrue if the checkbox should be checked for that value.
SelectLink to this heading#Select widget: <select><option ...>...</select>
This attribute is optional when the form field does not have a\nchoices attribute. If it does, it will override anything you set\nhere when the attribute is updated on the Field.
NullBooleanSelectLink to this heading#Select widget with options “Unknown”, “Yes” and “No”
\nSelectMultipleLink to this heading#Similar to Select, but allows multiple selection:\n<select multiple='multiple'>...</select>
RadioSelectLink to this heading#Similar to Select, but rendered as a list of radio buttons within\n<li> tags:
<ul>\n <li><input type='radio' name='...'></li>\n ...\n</ul>\nFor more granular control over the generated markup, you can loop over the\nradio buttons in the template. Assuming a form myform with a field\nbeatles that uses a RadioSelect as its widget:
{% for radio in myform.beatles %}\n<div class="myradio">\n {{ radio }}\n</div>\n{% endfor %}\nThis would generate the following HTML:
\n<div class="myradio">\n <label for="id_beatles_0"><input id="id_beatles_0" name="beatles" type="radio" value="john" required /> John</label>\n</div>\n<div class="myradio">\n <label for="id_beatles_1"><input id="id_beatles_1" name="beatles" type="radio" value="paul" required /> Paul</label>\n</div>\n<div class="myradio">\n <label for="id_beatles_2"><input id="id_beatles_2" name="beatles" type="radio" value="george" required /> George</label>\n</div>\n<div class="myradio">\n <label for="id_beatles_3"><input id="id_beatles_3" name="beatles" type="radio" value="ringo" required /> Ringo</label>\n</div>\nThat included the <label> tags. To get more granular, you can use each\nradio button’s tag, choice_label and id_for_label attributes.\nFor example, this template…
{% for radio in myform.beatles %}\n <label for="{{ radio.id_for_label }}">\n {{ radio.choice_label }}\n <span class="radio">{{ radio.tag }}</span>\n </label>\n{% endfor %}\n…will result in the following HTML:
\n<label for="id_beatles_0">\n John\n <span class="radio"><input id="id_beatles_0" name="beatles" type="radio" value="john" required /></span>\n</label>\n\n<label for="id_beatles_1">\n Paul\n <span class="radio"><input id="id_beatles_1" name="beatles" type="radio" value="paul" required /></span>\n</label>\n\n<label for="id_beatles_2">\n George\n <span class="radio"><input id="id_beatles_2" name="beatles" type="radio" value="george" required /></span>\n</label>\n\n<label for="id_beatles_3">\n Ringo\n <span class="radio"><input id="id_beatles_3" name="beatles" type="radio" value="ringo" required /></span>\n</label>\nIf you decide not to loop over the radio buttons – e.g., if your template\nsimply includes {{ myform.beatles }} – they’ll be output in a <ul>\nwith <li> tags, as above.
The outer <ul> container receives the id attribute of the widget,\nif defined, or BoundField.auto_id otherwise.
When looping over the radio buttons, the label and input tags include\nfor and id attributes, respectively. Each radio button has an\nid_for_label attribute to output the element’s ID.
CheckboxSelectMultipleLink to this heading#Similar to SelectMultiple, but rendered as a list of check\nbuttons:
<ul>\n <li><input type='checkbox' name='...' ></li>\n ...\n</ul>\nThe outer <ul> container receives the id attribute of the widget,\nif defined, or BoundField.auto_id otherwise.
Like RadioSelect, you can loop over the individual checkboxes for the\nwidget’s choices. Unlike RadioSelect, the checkboxes won’t include the\nrequired HTML attribute if the field is required because browser validation\nwould require all checkboxes to be checked instead of at least one.
When looping over the checkboxes, the label and input tags include\nfor and id attributes, respectively. Each checkbox has an\nid_for_label attribute to output the element’s ID.
FileInputLink to this heading#File upload input: <input type='file' ...>
ClearableFileInputLink to this heading#File upload input: <input type='file' ...>, with an additional checkbox\ninput to clear the field’s value, if the field is not required and has\ninitial data.
SplitDateTimeWidgetLink to this heading#Wrapper (using MultiWidget) around two widgets: DateInput\nfor the date, and TimeInput for the time. Must be used with\nSplitDateTimeField rather than DateTimeField.
SplitDateTimeWidget has two optional attributes:
Similar to DateInput.format
Similar to TimeInput.format
SelectDateWidgetLink to this heading#Wrapper around three Select widgets: one each for\nmonth, day, and year.
Takes several optional arguments:
\nAn optional list/tuple of years to use in the «year» select box.\nThe default is a list containing the current year and the next 9 years.
\nAn optional dict of months to use in the «months» select box.
\nThe keys of the dict correspond to the month number (1-indexed) and\nthe values are the displayed months:
\nMONTHS = {\n 1:_('jan'), 2:_('feb'), 3:_('mar'), 4:_('apr'),\n 5:_('may'), 6:_('jun'), 7:_('jul'), 8:_('aug'),\n 9:_('sep'), 10:_('oct'), 11:_('nov'), 12:_('dec')\n}\nIf the DateField is not required,\nSelectDateWidget will have an empty choice at the top of the\nlist (which is --- by default). You can change the text of this\nlabel with the empty_label attribute. empty_label can be a\nstring, list, or tuple. When a string is used, all select\nboxes will each have an empty choice with this label. If empty_label\nis a list or tuple of 3 string elements, the select boxes will\nhave their own custom label. The labels should be in this order\n('year_label', 'month_label', 'day_label').
# A custom empty label with string\nfield1 = forms.DateField(widget=SelectDateWidget(empty_label="Nothing"))\n\n# A custom empty label with tuple\nfield1 = forms.DateField(\n widget=SelectDateWidget(\n empty_label=("Choose Year", "Choose Month", "Choose Day"),\n ),\n)\n