form.cleaned_data is ignoring initial values

Question

I have the following form code:

class DisplaySharerForm(forms.Form):
    ORDER_BY_CHOICES = (
        ('customer_sharer_identifier', 'customer_sharer_identifier'),
        ('action_count', 'action_count'),
        ('redirect_link', 'redirect_link'),
        ('enabled', 'enabled'),
        ('click_total', 'click_total')
    )

    DIRECTION = (
        ('DESC','DESC'),
        ('ASC', 'ASC')
    )

    #These are the sorting options.  By default it's set to order by the customer_sharer_identifiers, descending, beginning at page 1.
    order_by = forms.ChoiceField(choices=ORDER_BY_CHOICES, required=False,initial='customer_sharer_identifier')
    direction = forms.ChoiceField(choices=DIRECTION, required=False,initial='DESC')
    action_type_id = forms.IntegerField(required=False)
    page_number = forms.IntegerField(required=False,initial=1)

Here's what I get when I try to create a DisplaySharerForm using the initial values:

>>> f = DisplaySharerForm({})
>>> f.is_valid()
True
>>> f.cleaned_data
{'action_type_id': None, 'direction': u'', 'page_number': None, 'order_by': u'', 'customer_sharer_identifier': None}

Why isn't cleaned_data being set to the initial values I provided and what can I do to fix it?

Answer 1

cleaned_data returns the cleaned values of the data bound to the form. In this case you've bound and empty dictionary to the form. The initial_data is used for the initial form display and for seeing which values have changed. You could "fix" this with a custom clean function:

class DisplaySharerForm(forms.Form):
...
    def clean(self):
        cleaned_data = super(DisplaySharerForm, self).clean()
        for key, value in cleaned_data.items():
            if not value and key in self.initial:
                cleaned_data[key] = self.initial[key]
        return cleaned_data