pythonpython-3.xdjangodjango-formsdropdownbox

How to change empty_label for modelForm choice field?

I have a field in one of my models like the following:

PAYROLL_CHOICES = (
    ('C1', 'Choice1'),
    ('C2', 'Choice2')
    etc.....
)

payrollProvider = models.CharField(max_length=2, choices=PAYROLL_CHOICES)

When I create a model form for this field, Django correctly generates an HTML select box, but includes a default blank value of "---------".

I would like to know how to change this default value to some other text, such as "please choose value".

I believe I should be able to set this in my model form's init via the following, as documented in this answer and several others:

self.fields['payrollProvider'].empty_label = "please choose value"

However, this isn't working for me. When I include that line in my form's init, "--------" still shows up as the initial choice in the select box. I'm pasting the relevant forms.py below, but it seems that others have also been unable to access / modify empty_label. At this link, the questioner describes a way to delete the default empty_label value (which I was able to do successfully via his method) but what I really want to do is to modify the empty_label that is displayed.

Any ideas?

Here's the code for the form in forms.py, with the empty_label code that isn't successful at changing the default "----------":

class PayrollCredentialForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PayrollCredentialForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['payrollUsername'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
        self.fields['payrollPassword'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
        self.fields['payrollProvider'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
        self.fields['payrollUsername'].widget.attrs.update({'placeholder' : '  Payroll Username'})
        self.fields['payrollPassword'].widget.attrs.update({'placeholder' : '  Payroll Password'})
        self.fields['payrollProvider'].empty_label = "please choose value"


class Meta:
    model = Company
    fields = ('payrollProvider', 'payrollUsername', 'payrollPassword')
    widgets = {
        'payrollPassword': forms.PasswordInput(),
    }
Solution

  • The problem is that you are trying to specify something that is not available for the type of Select field.

    The empty_label option is for forms.ModelChoiceField, which happens to use a Select widget, but is not the same kind of field as your CharField that you are providing options for.

    https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/forms/fields/#modelchoicefield

    You can see this also in a previous question here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/740011/1406860

    You could try and override the html of the modelform to add the first option as "please choose value". Alternatively, you could use a template filter to do the same thing. Lastly, you could and ("", "please choose value") to PAYROLL_CHOICES, and if you don't want it to be submitted without a payrollProvider just set blank=False for the field in the model.

    JD