wtforms Form class subclassing and field ordering

Question

I have a UserForm class:

class UserForm(Form):
    first_name = TextField(u\'First name\', [validators.Required()])
    last_name = TextField(u\'Last name\', [va         


        

Answer 1

This happens because the fields ordering is defined by UnboundField.creation_counter class, which uses the order the Field class appears in the code.

>>> x1 = UserForm()
>>> x2 = UpdateUserForm()
>>> [(f[0], f[1].creation_counter) for f in x1._unbound_fields]
[('first_name', 22), ('last_name', 23), ('middle_name', 24), ('username', 25), ('password', 26), ('email', 27)]
>>> [(f[0], f[1].creation_counter) for f in x2._unbound_fields]
[('first_name', 22), ('last_name', 23), ('middle_name', 24), ('username', 25), ('email', 27), ('password', 28)]
>>> 

As this is hard to solve (because wtforms try to be magic using this approach), the best way to deal with this is to define the fields in the desired order.

class BaseForm(Form):
    first_name = TextField(u'First name', [validators.Required()])
    last_name = TextField(u'Last name', [validators.Required()])
    middle_name = TextField(u'Middle name', [validators.Required()])
    username = TextField(u'Username', [validators.Required()])

class UserForm(BaseForm):
    password = TextField(u'Password', [validators.Required()], widget=PasswordInput())
    email = TextField(u'Email', [validators.Optional(), validators.Email()])

class UpdateUserForm(BaseForm):
    password = TextField(u'Password', [validators.Optional()], widget=PasswordInput())
    email = TextField(u'Email', [validators.Optional(), validators.Email()])

But if you are perfectionist or need to adhere to the DRY principle:

class BaseForm(Form):
    first_name = TextField(u'First name', [validators.Required()])
    last_name = TextField(u'Last name', [validators.Required()])
    middle_name = TextField(u'Middle name', [validators.Required()])
    username = TextField(u'Username', [validators.Required()])

class UserForm(BaseForm):
    password = TextField(u'Password', [validators.Required()], widget=PasswordInput())

class UpdateUserForm(BaseForm):
    password = TextField(u'Password', [validators.Optional()], widget=PasswordInput())

BaseForm.email = TextField(u'Email', [validators.Optional(), validators.Email()])