Modify value of a Django form field during clean()

Question

I am adding custom validation to my forms and custom fields in my Django app. I would like to be able to modify the value of a field when triggering an error. For example, if there is an error, the form should be redisplayed with the field value corrected by clean() and an error message "Data has been corrected below. Click save again to confirm if these changes are OK"

I've tried returning the modified data in cleaned_data[] like this but it doesn't work. It displays the error correctly, but the field value is not updated with the corrected HTML when the form is redisplayed.

class T34AtividadeForm(ModelForm):     def clean(self):         # Return cleaned html         error,html = fix_imgs(cleaned_data.get("a34_descricao"))         if error:             msg = u'Data has been corrected below. Click save again to confirm if these changes are OK';             self._errors['a34_descricao'] = ErrorList([msg])             # This doesn't work             cleaned_data["a34_descricao"] = html             # This doesn't work either             self.a34_descricao = html      return cleaned_data 

I'd also like to do the same thing with a field, but since the errors are triggered by exception, I don't get a chance to return the corrected value. Like the form clean() method, the error is displayed correctly, but the value is not updated.

class HTMLField(CharField):     widget = HTMLTextarea      def clean(self, value):         value = super(HTMLField,self).clean(value)         error,html = fix_imgs(value)         if error:             # This doesn't work             self.value = html             raise forms.ValidationError(u'Data has been corrected below. Click save again to confirm if these changes are OK.')         return html 

Answer 1

It is possible to modify a value of a field during clean() if you update self.data attribute of a Form. self.data is an instance of the QueryDict class. By default, querydicts are immutable. To make them mutable, you should use .copy() method. From the documentation:

The QueryDicts at request.POST and request.GET will be immutable when accessed in a normal request/response cycle. To get a mutable version you need to use QueryDict.copy()

self.data = self.data.copy() self.data['your_field'] = 'new value' 

Answer 2

change self data in the clean method to change the value which gets displayed