How to add class, id, placeholder attributes to a field in django model forms

Question

I have a django model like below

models.py

class Product(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length = 300)
    description = models.TextField(max_length = 2000)
    created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add = True)
    updated = models.DateTimeField(auto_now = True)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

forms.py

class ProductForm(ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Product
        exclude = ('updated', 'created')

product_form.py(just an example)

 <form enctype="multipart/form-data" action="{% url 'add_a_product' %}" method="post">
         <div id="name">
           {{form.name}}
         </div> 
         <div id="description">
           {{form.description}}
         </div> 
   </form> 

Actually I want to display/render the html output like below

<input id="common_id_for_inputfields" type="text" placeholder="Name" class="input-calss_name" name="Name">

<input id="common_id_for_inputfields" type="text" placeholder="Description" class="input-calss_name" name="description">

So finally how to add attributes(id, placeholder, class)to the model form fields in the above code ?

Answer 1

You can do the following:

#forms.py
class ProductForm(ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Product
        exclude = ('updated', 'created')

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(ProductForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['description'].widget = TextInput(attrs={
            'id': 'myCustomId',
            'class': 'myCustomClass',
            'name': 'myCustomName',
            'placeholder': 'myCustomPlaceholder'})

Answer 2

Field ids should be generated automatically by django, to override other fields:

class ProductForm(ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Product
        exclude = ('updated', 'created')

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(ProductForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['name'].widget.attrs\
            .update({
                'placeholder': 'Name',
                'class': 'input-calss_name'
            })

Answer 3

I really like Dmitriy Sintsov's answer but it doesn't work. Here's a version that does work:

def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
    super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    for field in iter(self.fields):
        self.fields[field].widget.attrs.update({
            'class': 'form-control'
    })

update

add this condition for better

if self.fields[field].widget.__class__.__name__ in ('AdminTextInputWidget' , 'Textarea' , 'NumberInput' , 'AdminURLFieldWidget', 'Select'): 
     self.fields[field].widget.attrs.update({ 'class': 'form-control' })

Answer 4

You can update forms.py as below

class ProductForm(ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Product
        exclude = ('updated', 'created')
        widgets={
                   "name":forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder':'Name','name':'Name','id':'common_id_for_imputfields','class':'input-class_name'}),
                   "description":forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder':'description','name':'description','id':'common_id_for_imputfields','class':'input-class_name'}),
                }  

Answer 5

Slightly modified version of excellent mariodev answer, adding bootstrap class to all form fields, so I do not have to re-create form input widgets for each field manually (short Python 3.x super()):

class ProductForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        for field in self.fields:
            self.fields[field].widget.attrs.update({
                'class': 'form-control'
            })

Answer 6

Adding to answer from Derick Hayes I created a class BasicForm which extends forms.ModelForm that adds the bootstrap classes to every form that extends it.

For my forms I just extend BasicForm instead of model form and automatically get bootstrap classes on all forms. I went a step further and append the classes to any custom css classes which may already be there.

class BaseModelForm(forms.ModelForm):

def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
    super(BaseModelForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    # add common css classes to all widgets
    for field in iter(self.fields):
        #get current classes from Meta
        classes = self.fields[field].widget.attrs.get("class")
        if classes is not None:
            classes += " form-control"
        else:
            classes = "form-control"
        self.fields[field].widget.attrs.update({
            'class': classes
        })

Answer 7

add_class filter for adding a CSS class to form field:

 {% load widget_tweaks %}     
    <form enctype="multipart/form-data" action="{% url 'add_a_product' %}" method="post">
                 <div id="name">
                   {{form.name|add_class:"input-calss_name"}}
                 </div> 
                 <div id="description">
                   {{form.description|add_class:"input-calss_name"}}
                 </div> 
           </form> 

django-widget-tweaks library

Answer 8

You can do the following:

class ProductForm(ModelForm):
    name = forms.CharField(label='name ', 
            widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder': 'name '}))