djangodjango-forms

Django's forms.Form vs forms.ModelForm


Could anyone explain to me similarities and differences of Django's forms.Form & forms.ModelForm?


Solution

  • Forms created from forms.Form are manually configured by you. You're better off using these for forms that do not directly interact with models. For example a contact form, or a newsletter subscription form, where you might not necessarily be interacting with the database.

    Where as a form created from forms.ModelForm will be automatically created and then can later be tweaked by you. The best examples really are from the superb documentation provided on the Django website.

    forms.Form:
    Documentation: Form objects
    Example of a normal form created with forms.Form:

    from django import forms
    
    class ContactForm(forms.Form):
        subject = forms.CharField(max_length=100)
        message = forms.CharField()
        sender = forms.EmailField()
        cc_myself = forms.BooleanField(required=False)
    

    forms.ModelForm:
    Documentation: Creating forms from models
    Straight from the docs:

    If your form is going to be used to directly add or edit a Django model, you can use a ModelForm to avoid duplicating your model description.

    Example of a model form created with forms.Modelform:

    from django.forms import ModelForm
    from . import models
    
    # Create the form class.
    class ArticleForm(ModelForm):
        class Meta:
            model = models.Article
    

    This form automatically has all the same field types as the Article model it was created from.