I seem to be misunderstanding how to use Django's ORM with ModelForms when dealing with ForeignKey relationships. I have two models defined as below and a ModelForm that is meant to create a new ChangeLogEntries instance, but I get a validation error that says a field (module_category) is required when I try to save.

Here are my models:

PYTHONCopied
class Modules(models.Model):
    module_code = models.CharField(max_length=5)
    module_name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    datetimestamp = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
    
    class Meta:
        # Defines the name to appear in the Admin section
        verbose_name_plural = "Modules"

PYTHONCopied
class ChangeLogEntries(models.Model):
    change_date = models.DateField()
    change_note = models.TextField()
    form_name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    datetimestamp = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
    module_code = models.CharField(max_length=5, null=True)
    binary_only = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    installed = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    dateinstalled = models.DateField(blank=True, null=True)
    module_category = models.ForeignKey(Modules, default=1, verbose_name="Module",
                                        on_delete=models.SET_DEFAULT, null=True)
    
    class Meta:
        # Defines the name to appear in the Admin section
        verbose_name_plural = "Log Entries"
    
    def __str__(self):
        return self.module_code

The ModelForm is defined as follows:

PYTHONCopied
class CreateLogEntryForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = ChangeLogEntries
        fields = ['change_date', 'change_note', 'module_code', 'binary_only', 'form_name']
    
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(CreateLogEntryForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        today = date.today()
        self.fields['change_date'] = forms.DateField(initial=today, required=True,
                                                     widget=DateInput(attrs={'type': 'date', 'style': 'width:200px'}))
        self.fields['change_note'].widget = Textarea(attrs={'rows': '6', 'cols': '80'})
        module_categories = Modules.objects.all().order_by('module_name').values_list('id', 'module_name')
        self.fields['module_category'] = forms.CharField(label="Module Name", required=True,
                                                     widget=forms.Select(choices=module_categories,
                                                                         attrs={'style': 'width: 300px;'}))
        self.fields['form_name'] = forms.CharField(label="Form/Class Name", required=False, initial="", max_length=50)
    
    def clean(self):
        super(CreateLogEntryForm, self).clean()
        
        # get the change note from the data
        change_note = self.cleaned_data.get('change_note')
        if len(change_note) < 5:
            self.errors['change_note'] = self.error_class(['The change note requires a minimum of 5 characters.'])
        
        # the form name must have at least 5 characters in order to be valid
        form_name = self.cleaned_data.get('form_name')
        if len(form_name) > 0:
            if len(form_name) < 5:
                self.errors['form_name'] = self.error_class(
                    ['The form name if specified, must be at least 5 characters.'])
            # if the binary-only field is checked, then we should not have a form name
            binary_only = self.cleaned_data.get('binary_only')
            if binary_only:
                self.errors['binary_only'] = self.error_class(
                    ['If Binary-Only is checked, you should not specify a form name.'])
        
        return self.cleaned_data

In my views.py, I handle the POST request to process the form:

PYTHONCopied
def createlogentry(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        form = CreateLogEntryForm(request.POST)
        if form.is_valid():
            form.save()
            return redirect('home')
        else:
            return render(request, 'main/createlogentry.html', {'form': form})
    else:
        form = CreateLogEntryForm()
    return render(request,
                  'main/createlogentry.html',
                  {'form': form
                   })

The dropdown for selecting a module displays correctly in the template, but when saving, a validation error indicates that module_category is required. I suspect that the way I'm defining the dropdown in the form is incorrect, especially since I'm manually assigning a CharField instead of directly using the related Modules objects.

I'm looking for guidance or examples that correctly implement the relationship so that a valid Modules object is saved with the log entry. Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.