Django: Display a field specific error in your Form/ModelForm

Django forms are incredibly flexible, but they're also a little cumbersome when it comes to errors.

The following example shows you that you can display an error for:

• a specific field
• a specific field from another field
• the form as a whole

view sourceprint?

01.class EventForm(forms.ModelForm):

02.  class Meta:

03.    model = Event

04. 

05.  title = forms.CharField(required = True)

06.  lawyer = forms.CharField(required = True)

07.  when = forms.CharField(max_length = 10, min_length = 10, widget = DateInput(format="%d-%m-%Y"))

08. 

09.  def clean_when(self):

10.    value = self.cleaned_data.get(field_name)

11. 

12.    if value:

13.      try:

14.        value = datetime.datetime.strptime(value, '%d-%m-%Y')

15.      except ValueError:

16.        value = None

17.        # Displays an error under the title field, even though it's validating as the "when" field.

18.        self._errors['title'] = ['Invalid date given.']

19. 

20.    return value

21. 

22. 

23.  def clean_lawyer(self):

24.    # Display error for the lawyer field

25.    raise forms.ValidationError("OBJECTION!")

26. 

27. 

28.  def clean(self):

29.    data = super(EventForm, self).clean()

30. 

31.    # In the clean() even, errors raised will display as an error for the form (non field error)

32.    raise forms.ValidationError('Just for the hell of it.')

33. 

34.    return data

Raising an error is the preferred way of doing things, but if you need to do multi-line errors then it's possible to use the self._errors method.

How many errors can you see here?