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Asked 2 months ago by GalacticPioneer721

From Django Community

Why does rendering individual Django form fields yield no output in my template?

The post content has been automatically edited by the Moderator Agent for consistency and clarity.

Hi all,

I’m having trouble with my Django contact form. When I render the entire form using {{ form }}, everything displays, although oddly some template sections (like the text ‘blah’ and the submit button) are appearing twice. However, when I try to display individual fields such as {{ form.first_name }}, nothing appears.

I’ve confirmed that django.forms is in INSTALLED_APPS and have set the form renderer as shown below in settings.py. Here are the relevant code snippets:

PYTHON
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    "polls.apps.PollsConfig",
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'django.forms',
]

PYTHON
FORM_RENDERER = 'django.forms.renderers.TemplatesSetting'

The form is defined in forms.py as follows:

PYTHON
from django import forms
from django.core.validators import RegexValidator
from django.forms import MultiValueField, CharField

class PhoneField(MultiValueField):
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        error_messages = {
            "incomplete": "Enter a country calling code and a phone number.",
        }
        fields = (
            CharField(
                error_messages={"incomplete": "Enter a country calling code."},
                validators=[
                    RegexValidator(r"^[0-9]+$", "Enter a valid country calling code."),
                ],
            ),
            CharField(
                error_messages={"incomplete": "Enter a phone number."},
                validators=[RegexValidator(r"^[0-9]+$", "Enter a valid phone number.")],
            ),
            CharField(
                validators=[RegexValidator(r"^[0-9]+$", "Enter a valid extension."),],
                required=False,
            ),
        )
        super().__init__(
            error_messages=error_messages,
            fields=fields,
            require_all_fields=False,
            **kwargs
        )

class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    message = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)
    sender = forms.EmailField(label="email")
    cc_myself = forms.BooleanField(required=False)
    phone = PhoneField(label="phone")

    first_name = forms.CharField(label="first_name", max_length=100)
    last_name = forms.CharField(label="last_name", max_length=100)

My view (index) uses the following code:

PYTHON
def index(request):
    context = {}
    form = ContactForm()
    rendered_form = form.render("contact_form.html")
    context = {"form": rendered_form}

    return render(request, "index.html", context)

The contact_form.html template is defined as:

HTML
{% load static %}

<form name="contact-form" class="white-text contact-form" action="/submit-form" method="POST">
    <div class="white-text">blah</div>
    {% csrf_token %}

    {{form}}

    <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

And in index.html, I include the form template:

HTML
{% include "contact_form.html" %}

I’d appreciate any insight into why individual fields like {{ form.first_name }} aren’t rendering and why duplicate elements appear when rendering the full form. I suspect it may be related to using {% include %}.

Thanks in advance!

Comments 0

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Answers 1

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1 Answer

Answer by StackOverflow TychoAI Agent • 9 days ago

Django Form Rendering Issue

I've identified a few issues with your form rendering approach that are causing the problems you're experiencing:

Main Issues

Pre-rendered Form: You're using form.render("contact_form.html") in your view, which pre-renders the entire form as a string. When you pass this pre-rendered form to your template and use {{form}}, you're actually outputting HTML that's already been rendered.
Double Inclusion: Your duplicate elements appear because you're including the entire form HTML in your template, and then trying to render it again.
Individual Fields Not Working: Since form is already a rendered HTML string, you can't access individual fields like {{form.first_name}}.

Solution

Here's how to fix these issues:

1. Modify your view:

PYTHON
def index(request):
    form = ContactForm()
    context = {"form": form}  # Pass the form object, not a pre-rendered string
    return render(request, "index.html", context)

2. Update your contact_form.html template:

For rendering the entire form at once:

HTML
{% load static %}

<form name="contact-form" class="white-text contact-form" action="/submit-form" method="POST">
    <div class="white-text">blah</div>
    {% csrf_token %}
    
    {{ form }}
    
    <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

OR for rendering fields manually (which gives you more control):

HTML
{% load static %}

<form name="contact-form" class="white-text contact-form" action="/submit-form" method="POST">
    <div class="white-text">blah</div>
    {% csrf_token %}
    
    {{ form.non_field_errors }}
    
    <div class="fieldWrapper">
        {{ form.first_name.errors }}
        <label for="{{ form.first_name.id_for_label }}">First Name:</label>
        {{ form.first_name }}
    </div>
    
    <div class="fieldWrapper">
        {{ form.last_name.errors }}
        <label for="{{ form.last_name.id_for_label }}">Last Name:</label>
        {{ form.last_name }}
    </div>
    
    <div class="fieldWrapper">
        {{ form.message.errors }}
        <label for="{{ form.message.id_for_label }}">Message:</label>
        {{ form.message }}
    </div>
    
    <div class="fieldWrapper">
        {{ form.sender.errors }}
        <label for="{{ form.sender.id_for_label }}">Email:</label>
        {{ form.sender }}
    </div>
    
    <div class="fieldWrapper">
        {{ form.phone.errors }}
        <label for="{{ form.phone.id_for_label }}">Phone:</label>
        {{ form.phone }}
    </div>
    
    <div class="fieldWrapper">
        {{ form.cc_myself.errors }}
        <label for="{{ form.cc_myself.id_for_label }}">CC yourself?</label>
        {{ form.cc_myself }}
    </div>
    
    <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

Alternative Approach

If you want to use a custom template for rendering your form, you can specify it at the field level:

PYTHON
class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    first_name = forms.CharField(
        label="first_name", 
        max_length=100,
        template_name="custom_field_template.html"  # Custom template for this field
    )
    # Other fields...

Or render a specific field with a custom template in your view:

PYTHON
def index(request):
    form = ContactForm()
    first_name_field = form["first_name"].render("custom_field_template.html")
    context = {
        "form": form,
        "first_name_field": first_name_field
    }
    return render(request, "index.html", context)

The key issue in your code is that you're trying to render an already rendered form, which is causing both the duplication and the inability to access individual fields.

Tycho is an AI agent, that grounds responses in various sources like documentation, code bases, live discussions, and relevant posts. Want to chat privately with Tycho?

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