How do I set default widget attributes for a Django ModelForm?

Question

I'd like to set the class attribute for the TextInput Widget to one value for all the fields in my form that use it without having to list them all in Meta: widgets = {.... Is this possible?

Thanks.

Answer 1

For ModelForm we can use this.

from django import forms
from django.contrib.auth.models import User 

class UserForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(UserForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        # change a widget attribute:
        self.fields['user_permissions'].widget.attrs["size"] = 5
        self.fields['user_permissions'].widget.attrs["class"] = 'form-control required'

    class Meta:
        model = User 

Answer 2

You can override the constructor in order to modify all TextInput widgets:

from django import forms

class MyForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(MyForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        for name, field in self.fields.items():
            if field.widget.__class__ == forms.widgets.TextInput:
                if 'class' in field.widget.attrs:
                    field.widget.attrs['class'] += ' my-class'
                else:
                    field.widget.attrs.update({'class':'my-class'})
    class Meta:
        model = MyModel

can you override init with a decorator? also, there should be an if statement before the attrs.update() becuase I want to set a default rather than override what may already be there. – Kevin

Untested, but I guess you can just inherit from MyForm if you use this a lot.