How to check if django form data is None, ' ' (empty string), or False

Question

if form.data['first_name'] is None:
    return True
else: 
   return False  

I'm trying to check if this first_name field is blank or "None". But if the field happens to be blank the following will return ( u'' ) along with false. Any other solution for determining if this specific form field is blank or none? And why this happens?

Answer 1

The problem is that by checking for:

 if form.data['first_name'] is None:

you only check if the value is None, whereas:

if not form.data['first_name']:

checks for None or '' an empty string or False come to that.

What you could also do is:

return bool(form.data.get('first_name', False))

In this case if form.data['first_name'] is not present it will return False, if the value is None or '' this will also return False, if the value is True or 'a string' it will return True.