Proper way to handle multiple forms on one page in Django

Question

I have a template page expecting two forms. If I just use one form, things are fine as in this typical example:

if request.method == \'POST\':
    form = Au         


        

Answer 1

Django's class based views provide a generic FormView but for all intents and purposes it is designed to only handle one form.

One way to handle multiple forms with same target action url using Django's generic views is to extend the 'TemplateView' as shown below; I use this approach often enough that I have made it into an Eclipse IDE template.

class NegotiationGroupMultifacetedView(TemplateView):
    ### TemplateResponseMixin
    template_name = 'offers/offer_detail.html'

    ### ContextMixin 
    def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
        """ Adds extra content to our template """
        context = super(NegotiationGroupDetailView, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)

        ...

        context['negotiation_bid_form'] = NegotiationBidForm(
            prefix='NegotiationBidForm', 
            ...
            # Multiple 'submit' button paths should be handled in form's .save()/clean()
            data = self.request.POST if bool(set(['NegotiationBidForm-submit-counter-bid',
                                              'NegotiationBidForm-submit-approve-bid',
                                              'NegotiationBidForm-submit-decline-further-bids']).intersection(
                                                    self.request.POST)) else None,
            )
        context['offer_attachment_form'] = NegotiationAttachmentForm(
            prefix='NegotiationAttachment', 
            ...
            data = self.request.POST if 'NegotiationAttachment-submit' in self.request.POST else None,
            files = self.request.FILES if 'NegotiationAttachment-submit' in self.request.POST else None
            )
        context['offer_contact_form'] = NegotiationContactForm()
        return context

    ### NegotiationGroupDetailView 
    def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        context = self.get_context_data(**kwargs)

        if context['negotiation_bid_form'].is_valid():
            instance = context['negotiation_bid_form'].save()
            messages.success(request, 'Your offer bid #{0} has been submitted.'.format(instance.pk))
        elif context['offer_attachment_form'].is_valid():
            instance = context['offer_attachment_form'].save()
            messages.success(request, 'Your offer attachment #{0} has been submitted.'.format(instance.pk))
                # advise of any errors

        else 
            messages.error('Error(s) encountered during form processing, please review below and re-submit')

        return self.render_to_response(context)

The html template is to the following effect:

...


    {% csrf_token %}
    {{ negotiation_bid_form.as_p }}
    ...
    


...


    {% csrf_token %}
    {{ offer_attachment_form.as_p }}

    


...