how do you strip whitespace from entries in django forms?

Question

I am trying to use django forms init features, and for some reason the net seems pretty terse on advanced form features. I just want to take typos like "repo-with-accidental-space " and make it "repo-with-accidental-space". Right now I have:

class BitbucketCreateRepoForm(forms.Form):
    def __init__(self, repo_name=None, *args, **kwargs):
        if repo_name:
            self.repo_name = repo_name.strip()
        super(BitbucketCreateRepoForm, self).__init__()

    username    = forms.ChoiceField(required=True, initial='codyc54321', choices=BITBUCKET_USERNAME_CHOICES)
    repo_name   = forms.CharField(required=True, label='Repo name')
    description = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea, required=False)

The form will load on page, but when I submit:

AttributeError at /bitbucket/create-repo
'QueryDict' object has no attribute 'strip'

Going in ipdb gets hairy, there must be a standard way to do this, but I don't work at the place I saw it done anymore.

This is the view:

def create_repo(request):
    form = BitbucketCreateRepoForm(request.POST or None)
    if form.is_valid():
        repo_name   = request.POST['repo_name']
        username    = request.POST['username']
        description = request.POST['description'] or None            
        create_repo_func(username=username, repo_name=repo_name, description=description)
    return render(request, 'bitbucket/create_repo.html', locals())

How do I process this field only if the form went through a POST, and update that field, leaving it empty on GET request? Thank you

What isn't working? are you getting errors? .strip() will remove whitespace at the beginning and end of the string: docs.python.org/2/library/string.html#string.strip — Brandon

brock brock · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-04T01:09:29

Pass in the request method when you instantiate this form. You can check for request method with:

post = request.method == 'POST'

The you can pass this into the modified __init__ below.

class BitbucketCreateRepoForm(forms.Form):
    def __init__(self, repo_name=None, post=False, *args, **kwargs):
        if repo_name and post:
            self.repo_name = json.dumps(repo_name).strip()
        super(BitbucketCreateRepoForm, self).__init__()

    username    = forms.ChoiceField(required=True, initial='codyc54321', choices=BITBUCKET_USERNAME_CHOICES)
    repo_name   = forms.CharField(required=True, label='Repo name')
    description = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea, required=False)

UPDATE: I was typing as you modified your question. In order to get the string representation of a QueryDict object simply import json then json.dumps(repo_name). Hope that helps.

how do you strip whitespace from entries in django forms?

1 Answers