TextField missing in django.forms

Question

from django import forms

class UserForm(forms.ModelForm):
    first_name = forms.TextField(label=_(u'First name'), required=False)
    last_name = forms.TextField(label=_(u'Last name'))

The code above gives me an "AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'TextField'. Everything seems to be ok, except the missing TextField:

ipdb> forms
<module 'django.forms' from '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/forms/__init__.pyc'>
ipdb> forms.
forms.BaseForm                        forms.EmailField                      forms.MultiWidget                     forms.TypedChoiceField
forms.BaseModelForm                   forms.Field                           forms.MultipleChoiceField             forms.TypedMultipleChoiceField
forms.BooleanField                    forms.FileField                       forms.MultipleHiddenInput             forms.URLField
forms.CharField                       forms.FileInput                       forms.NullBooleanField                forms.ValidationError
forms.CheckboxInput                   forms.FilePathField                   forms.NullBooleanSelect               forms.Widget
forms.CheckboxSelectMultiple          forms.FloatField                      forms.PasswordInput                   forms.fields
forms.ChoiceField                     forms.Form                            forms.RadioSelect                     forms.fields_for_model
forms.ClearableFileInput              forms.HiddenInput                     forms.RegexField                      forms.forms
forms.ComboField                      forms.IPAddressField                  forms.Select                          forms.formsets
forms.DEFAULT_DATETIME_INPUT_FORMATS  forms.ImageField                      forms.SelectMultiple                  forms.model_to_dict
forms.DEFAULT_DATE_INPUT_FORMATS      forms.IntegerField                    forms.SlugField                       forms.models
forms.DEFAULT_TIME_INPUT_FORMATS      forms.Media                           forms.SplitDateTimeField              forms.save_instance
forms.DateField                       forms.MediaDefiningClass              forms.SplitDateTimeWidget             forms.util
forms.DateInput                       forms.ModelChoiceField                forms.TextInput                       forms.widgets
forms.DateTimeField                   forms.ModelForm                       forms.Textarea                        
forms.DateTimeInput                   forms.ModelMultipleChoiceField        forms.TimeField                       
forms.DecimalField                    forms.MultiValueField                 forms.TimeInput          

Any idea?

Answer 1

CharField might be what you are looking for.

EDIT: To clarify, the docs mention TextField as a model field type. You cannot use it as form field. The table that the OP pointed out indicates that a TextField in a model is represented as a CharField (with widget=forms.Textarea) in a corresponding ModelForm. I would imagine, then, that there is no form field with Textarea as its default widget.

If I were to guess why Django made this choice, I would say that having two fields that differ only in the widget they use, not in the type of data being stored, validation, etc. might be considered useless by the people at Django and hence you have to manually change the widget.

Answer 2

If you want a textarea you can use the forms.CharField with the forms.TextArea widget.

class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    message = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)

Answer 3

Just want to add a better example for beginners like me, as all mentioned above, there is no TextFile for ModelForm, and if you need to use it, for the OP's case, should be:

first_name = forms.CharField(
     widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder': 'first name'}),
     label=_(u'First name'), 
     required=False)

And if you do need a textarea field for description or comment, then you can use Textarea widget:

description = forms.CharField(
     widget=forms.Textarea(attrs={'placeholder': 'Please enter the  description'}))