Django: How to build a custom form widget?

Question

I am having a difficult time finding documentation on how to write a custom widget.

My questions are:

• If I build a custom widget, can it be used equiva

Answer 1

Usually I start by inheriting from one of the existing widgets, add a new desired property and then modify a render method. Here's an example for a filterable select widget I implemented. The filtering is done via jquery mobile.

class FilterableSelectWidget(forms.Select):
    def __init__(self, attrs=None, choices=()):
        super(FilterableSelectWidget, self).__init__(attrs, choices)
        # choices can be any iterable, but we may need to render this widget
        # multiple times. Thus, collapse it into a list so it can be consumed
        # more than once.
        self._data_filter = {}

    @property
    def data_filter(self):
        return self._data_filter

    @data_filter.setter
    def data_filter(self, attr_dict):
        self._data_filter.update(attr_dict)

    def render_option(self, selected_choices, option_value, option_label):
        option_value = force_text(option_value)
        if option_value in selected_choices:
            selected_html = mark_safe(' selected="selected"')
            if not self.allow_multiple_selected:
                # Only allow for a single selection.
                selected_choices.remove(option_value)
        else:
            selected_html = ''
        # use self.data_filter
        filtertext = self.data_filter.get(option_value)
        data_filtertext = 'data-filtertext="{filtertext}"'.\
            format(filtertext=filtertext) if filtertext else ''
        return format_html('{2}',
                           option_value,
                           selected_html,
                           force_text(option_label),
                           mark_safe(data_filtertext))

Then in the views where I create a form, I'll set the data_filter for the field.

        some_form.fields["some_field"] = \
            forms.ChoiceField(choices=choices,
                              widget=FilterableSelectWidget)
        some_form.fields["some_field"].widget.data_filter = \
            data_filter