Make Your Forms Clean and Simple using Django Uni-Form and Twitter Bootstrap CSS
Make Your Forms Clean and Simple using Django Uni-Form and Twitter Bootstrap CSS
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.
Join For FreeJumpstart your Angular applications with Indigo.Design, a unified platform for visual design, UX prototyping, code generation, and app development.
I'm sure, most of you, know what django-uni-form is... For those that don't, django-uni-form is a very cool django app that makes form management/styling/layouting a breeze. You can do pretty much anything to a form with it: Split it in formsets, add HTML between every element, wrap different elements in different containers etc. Also, it produces great HTML, and it manages the <form> tag, as well as the submit/reset buttons. If you aren't using it, you should definitely start.
Twitter Bootstrap
is a client side framework by twitter, encompassing many aspects -
layout, sane default CSS, typography,
Javascript plugins, even some icons. It looks very professional, it's
easy to use and very popular. The way bootstrap styles a form is what
most people need when
building or prototyping a web app. But, you need to be able to change
some css classes and html elements in order to work.
Originally Authored by Dejan Noveski
Doing this with django-uni-form is extremely easy. All we need to do is change the default field template. I'll start with an example:
Bootstrap
This step is easy. Just make sure you have downloaded the Bootstrap CSS file, and that it's properly loaded.
The HTML
Simple HTML is all we need:
{% load uni_form_tags %}
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Django Uniform and Bootstrap</title>
<!-- LOAD BOOTSTRAP CSS HERE -->
</head>
<body>
<header class="navbar">
</header>
<div role="main" class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="span12">
{% uni_form form form.helper %}
</div>
</div>
<hr/>
<footer>
Brainacle 2012
</footer>
</div>
<!-- LOAD BOOTSTRAP JS HERE -->
</body>
</html>
The Form
I'm making a simple User edit ModelForm, with one extra text field:
from django import forms
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse
from uni_form.helper import FormHelper
from uni_form.layout import Layout, ButtonHolder, Submit, Fieldset
class UserEditForm(forms.ModelForm):
bio = forms.CharField(label = _('Bio'), required = False,
widget=forms.Textarea(attrs={'class':'span12'}))
class Meta:
model = User
fields = ("username", "first_name", "last_name", "email")
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.helper = FormHelper()
self.helper.form_method = 'POST'
self.helper.form_action = reverse("user_edit_view_name")
self.helper.form_class = 'form-horizontal'
self.helper.layout = Layout(
Fieldset(
'Edit Account Info',
'username', 'first_name', 'last_name',
'email', 'bio', 'save',
),
ButtonHolder(
Submit('save', 'Save', css_class='btn btn-large btn-primary pull-right')
)
)
return super(UserEditForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
Notes: We add span10 class to the "bio" field textarea because labels will take 2 spans, and we want the textarea
fill the entire width. We add class "form-horizontal" to the form, to get the labels position in line with the inputs.
The button classes are also important.
The Magic
Now, we have to tell uni-form to generate html that will be compatible with Bootstrap.
Lucky enough, uni-form provides us with the ability to override the generic field HTML template.
Just make a new file called field.html inside [template root path]/uni_form/ folder with the
following content:
{% if field.is_hidden %}
{{ field }}
{% else %}
<div class="control-group {% if field.errors %}error{% endif %}">
<label for="{{ field.auto_id }}" class="control-label">
{% if field.field.required %}<b>{% endif %}{{ field.label|safe }}{% if field.field.required %}*</b>{% endif %}
</label>
<div class="controls">
{{ field }}
{% if field.errors %}
<span class="help-inline">{% for error in field.errors %}{{ error }}<br/> {% endfor %}</span>
{% endif %}
{% if field.help_text%}
<p class="help-block">
{{ field.help_text|safe }}
</p>
{% endif %}
</div>
</div>
{% endif %}
This template handles labels, required fields, help text, errors etc. The end result looks something like this:
Source: http://brainacle.com/how-to-use-django-uni-form-with-twitter-bootstrap-css.html
Take a look at the Indigo.Design sample applications to learn more about how apps are created with design to code software.
Like This Article? Read More From DZone
Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.
{{ parent.title || parent.header.title}}
{{ parent.tldr }}
{{ parent.linkDescription }}
{{ parent.urlSource.name }}