Django: Set datetime.now() in a Form

A tricky little devil this one. For instance, you've got a "created" date in your form and you need it to be set to the current date whenever the page is displayed.

So immediately you go and do this

view sourceprint?

1.class SomeForm(forms.Form):

2.  test_datetime = forms.SplitDateTimeField(initial = datetime.datetime.now())

First load, sweet it works. But load the page again, and you'll realise the date is still the same! FUUUUUUUUU!

It seems that the initial date/time is resolved when the server is first initiated. So, how do we fix that?

Easy!

view sourceprint?

1.class SomeForm(forms.Form):

2.  test_datetime = forms.SplitDateTimeField(initial = datetime.datetime.now)

Can you spot the difference?

Just remove the () from now(). That's it! If we pass it a function, it'll evaluate it on display.