Use field label as placeholder in django-crispy-forms

Question

I'm thinking about the DRY way to use field labels for placeholder attribute of my <input> HTML elements. I'm using django-crispy-forms.

Right now I have:

class FilterForm(Form):

    query = CharField(max_length=50, label='', required=False)

    def __init__(self, data=None, files=None, **kwargs):
        self.helper = FormHelper()
        self.helper.layout = Layout(
            Field('query', placeholder='Search ...'),
        )
        super(FilterForm, self).__init__(data, files, **kwargs)

I'd prefer, however, not to have to set label and placeholder separately, as this for will eventually have many more fields and it's quite verbose.

What are your suggestions?

Answer 1

A DRY solution could be achieved with this __init__ method:

def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
    super(FilterForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    helper = self.helper = FormHelper()

    # Moving field labels into placeholders
    layout = helper.layout = Layout()
    for field_name, field in self.fields.items():
        layout.append(Field(field_name, placeholder=field.label))
    helper.form_show_labels = False

Answer 2

Currently, hiding labels can be achieved by using the bootstrap helper attribute below:

self.helper.form_show_labels = False

Default set to True. It decides wether to render or not form’s fields labels.

You still need to define the placeholder using the Field layout object:

Field('query', placeholder='Search ...'),

Answer 3

Try this:

class FilterForm(Form):

    query = CharField(max_length=50, label='', required=False)

    def __init__(self, data=None, files=None, **kwargs):
        self.helper = FormHelper()
        self.helper.layout = Layout(
            Field('query', placeholder=kwargs.pop('query_placeholder', 'random text')),
        )
        super(FilterForm, self).__init__(data, files, **kwargs)