TypeError: Field 'id' expected a number but got DeferredAttribute object at 0x000002B6ADE878D0

Question

I am using a queryset in Django- whenever I run the server, it gives an error.

TypeError: Field 'id' expected a number but got <django.db.models.query_utils.DeferredAttribute object at 0x000002B6ADE878D0

It is something about the queryset of my form that causes the error.

I don't know whether its an issue with my models.py or my forms.py I tried looking up this DeferredAttribute object on Google, but I didn't really see any answer that works for me.

forms.py:

from .models import Task, Categories
from django import forms
from django.forms import ModelForm
from django.db.models import Q

class TaskForm(ModelForm):

    task_title = forms.CharField(max_length=100)
    task_description = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)        
    due_date = forms.DateTimeField()    
    is_completed = forms.BooleanField()
    #categories = forms.ModelChoiceField(empty_label="---None---")

    class Meta:
        model = Task
        fields = ['task_title', 'task_description', 'due_date', 'is_completed', 'categories', 'parent']        

    def __init__(self, user, *args, **kwargs):
        # Get all the categories from the database for that specific user
        super(TaskForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        # It is something about this line that causes the error
        self.fields['categories'].queryset = Categories.objects.filter(Q(user_id__isnull=True) | Q(user_id=user.id))

models.py:

from django.db import models
from django.db.models import Q
from users.models import CustomUser
from django.urls import reverse
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model


class Categories(models.Model):
    category_type = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    user = models.ForeignKey(CustomUser, null = True,  on_delete=models.CASCADE)

    def __str__(self):
        return '%s ' % (self.category_type)

    def get_absolute_url(self):
        return reverse('task_list')


class Task(models.Model):
    task_title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    task_description = models.TextField()
    date_added =  models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    due_date  = models.DateTimeField()
    is_completed = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    user = models.ForeignKey(get_user_model(), on_delete=models.CASCADE)

    categories = models.ForeignKey('Categories', on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    parent = models.ForeignKey("self", on_delete=models.CASCADE)

    class Meta:
        verbose_name = "Task"
        verbose_name_plural = "Tasks"

    def __str__(self):
        return '%s ID: %s' % (self.task_title, self.last_name)

    def get_absolute_url(self):
        return reverse('task_detail')

CustomUser model:

from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser
from django.db import models

class CustomUser(AbstractUser):
    nationality = models.CharField(null=True, blank=True, max_length=60)

views.py:

from django.views.generic import TemplateView
from django.views.generic.edit import UpdateView, DeleteView , CreateView
from django.urls import reverse_lazy
from .forms import TaskForm
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
from django.http import JsonResponse
from django.template.loader import render_to_string

class TaskListView(TemplateView):
    template_name = "tasks.html"

# This is the actual create view I am for using now
class TaskCreateView(CreateView):
    template_name = 'create.html'
    form_class = TaskForm(get_user_model())
    success_url = reverse_lazy('task_list')

# I am using this for a modal, but its not working so I fell back to the  normal create view
def task_create(request):
    form = TaskForm(get_user_model())
    context = {'form': form}
    html_form = render_to_string('tasks/partial_task_create.html',
        context,
        request=request,
    )
    return JsonResponse({'html_form': html_form})    

Answer 1

A statement like:

form = TaskForm(get_user_model())

does not make much sense. Indeed, get_user_model() returns a reference to the user class, not to a user object (like the logged in user). You can construct such a form with:

from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required

@login_required
def task_create(request):
    form = TaskForm(request.user)
    context = {'form': form}
    html_form = render_to_string('tasks/partial_task_create.html',
        context,
        request=request,
    )
    return JsonResponse({'html_form': html_form})

Here we use the @login_required decorator [Django-doc] to prevent user that are not logged in to access the view. This is useful, since in that case request.user is not a user object.

or in the CreateView [Django-doc] you can override the get_form_kwargs method [Django-doc] to :

from django.contrib.auth.mixins import LoginRequiredMixin

class TaskCreateView(LoginRequiredMixin, CreateView):
    template_name = 'create.html'
    form_class = TaskForm
    success_url = reverse_lazy('task_list')

    def get_form_kwargs(self):
        kwargs = super().get_form_kwargs()
        kwargs.update(user=self.request.user)
        return kwargs

In order to enforce a user to be logged in, we then use a LoginRequiredMixin mixin [Django-doc].