In Django, how to pass selected dropdown value from template to view?

Question

I searched for so long for a solution to this, but still can't find any. I have a big form in my template, which is actually composed of a bunch of model forms. One field in that big form is not part of a form, but is a single dynamic drop down menu populated from a table called "Institutions" in views.py as such: Institutions.objects.all()

Here is the part from views.py:

def submission_form(request):

    institutions = Institution.objects.all()

    if request.method == 'POST':
        abstractform = AbstractForm(request.POST)
        authorform = AuthorForm(request.POST)

        # Here I want code: if selected institution is this, then do that

        if abstractform.is_valid() and authorform.is_valid()
            new_abstract = abstractform.save()
            new_author = authorform.save()


     else:  
         return render(request, 'records/submission_form.html', {'abstractform': abstractform, 'authorform': authorform, 'institutions':institutions })

This is the drop down in my template:

 <select id="ddlInstititions">
    <option value="%">---------</option>
    {% for entry in institutions %} 
     <option value="{{ entry.id }}">{{ entry.name }}</option>
    {% endfor %}
</select>

My question is: Is it possible to pass that selected entry.name to the view so I can use it there? If not, what do you recommend doing instead?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

In order for any form element to be sent in the POST, you need to have a name attribute. So it should be <select id="ddlInstititions" name="institutions">.

What's passed to the view in the POST is the value attribute of each option element. Currently, you've set that to entry.id, so it's the ID that will be in the POST. You can either use that to look up the Institution object and get the name, or you can change the form so you put entry.name directly in the value attribute.