FormHelper

What is a FormHelper and how to use it, is thoroughly explained in a previous section {% crispy %} tag with forms.

FormHelper with a form attached (Default layout)

Since version 1.2.0 FormHelper optionally can be passed an instance of a form. You would do it this way:

from crispy_forms.helper import FormHelper

class ExampleForm(forms.Form):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.helper = FormHelper(self)

When you do this crispy-forms builds a default layout using form.fields for you, so you don’t have to manually list them all if your form is huge. If you later need to manipulate some bits of a big layout, using dynamic layouts is highly recommended, check Updating layouts on the go.

Also, now the helper is able to cross match the layout with the form instance, being able to search by widget type if you are using dynamic API.

Helper attributes you can set

template_pack

Allows you to set what template pack you want to use at FormHelper level. This is useful for example when a website needs to render different styling forms for different use cases, like desktop website vs smartphone website.

template

When set allows you to render a form/formset using a custom template. Default template is at {{ TEMPLATE_PACK }}/[whole_uni_form.html|whole_uni_formset.html].

field_template

When set allows you to render a form/formset using a custom field template. Default template is at {{ TEMPLATE_PACK }}/field.html.

form_method = ``POST``

Specifies form method attribute. You can see it to POST or GET. Defaults to POST.

form_action

Applied to the form action attribute. Can be a named URL in your URLconf that can be executed via the {% url %} template tag. Example: ‘show_my_profile’. In your URLconf you could have something like:

url(r'^show/profile/$', 'show_my_profile_view', name='show_my_profile')

You can also point it to a URL ‘/whatever/blabla/’.

Sometimes you may want to add arguments to the URL, for that you will have to do in your view:

from django.urls import reverse
form.helper.form_action = reverse('url_name', args=[event.id])
form.helper.form_action = reverse('url_name', kwargs={'book_id': book.id})

attrs

Added in 1.2.0, a dictionary to set any kind of form attributes. Underscores in keys are translated into hyphens. The recommended way when you need to set several form attributes in order to keep your helper tidy:

``{'id': 'form-id', 'data_id': '/whatever'}``
<form id="form-id" data-id="/whatever" ...>

form_id

Specifies form DOM id attribute. If no id provided then no id attribute is created on the form.

form_class

String containing separated CSS classes to be applied to form class attribute. The form will always have by default ‘uniForm’ class.

form_tag = True

It specifies if <form></form> tags should be rendered when using a Layout. If set to False it renders the form without the <form></form> tags. Defaults to True.

disable_csrf = False

Disable CSRF token, when done, crispy-forms won’t use {% csrf_token %} tag. This is useful when rendering several forms using {% crispy %} tag and form_tag = False csrf_token gets rendered several times.

form_error_title

If you are rendering a form using {% crispy %} tag and it has non_field_errors to display, they are rendered in a div. You can set the title of the div with this attribute. Example: “Form Errors”.

formset_error_title

If you are rendering a formset using {% crispy %} tag and it has non_form_errors to display, they are rendered in a div. You can set the title of the div with this attribute. Example: “Formset Errors”.

form_style = ‘default’

Helper attribute for uni_form template pack. Uni-form has two different form styles built-in. You can choose which one to use, setting this variable to default or inline.

form_show_errors = True

Default set to True. It decides whether to render or not form errors. If set to False, form.errors will not be visible even if they happen. You have to manually render them customizing your template. This allows you to customize error output.

render_unmentioned_fields = False

By default django-crispy-forms renders the layout specified if it exists strictly, which means it only renders what the layout mentions, unless your form has Meta.fields and Meta.exclude defined, in that case it uses them. If you want to render unmentioned fields (all form fields), for example if you are worried about forgetting mentioning them you have to set this property to True. It defaults to False.

render_hidden_fields = False

By default django-crispy-forms renders the layout specified if it exists strictly. Sometimes you might be interested in rendering all form’s hidden fields no matter if they are mentioned or not. Useful when trying to render forms with layouts as part of a formset with hidden primary key fields. It defaults to False.

render_required_fields = False

By default django-crispy-forms renders the layout specified if it exists strictly. Sometimes you might be interested in rendering all form’s required fields no matter if they are mentioned or not. It defaults to False.

include_media = True

By default django-crispy-forms renders all form media for you within the form. If you want to render form media yourself manually outside the form, set this to False. If you want to globally prevent rendering of form media, override the FormHelper class with this setting modified. It defaults to True.

Bootstrap Helper attributes

There are currently some helper attributes that only have functionality for a specific template pack. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t be supported for other template packs in the future.

help_text_inline = False

Sets whether help texts should be rendered inline or block. If set to True help texts will be rendered using help-inline class, otherwise using help-block. By default text messages are rendered in block mode.

error_text_inline = True

Sets whether to render error messages inline or block. If set to True errors will be rendered using help-inline class, otherwise using help-block. By default error messages are rendered in inline mode.

html5_required = False

When set to True all required fields inputs will be rendered with HTML5 required=required attribute.

form_show_labels = True

Default set to True. Determines whether or not to render the form’s field labels.

Bootstrap 3 Helper attributes

All previous, bootstrap (version 2) attributes are also settable in bootstrap 3 template pack FormHelpers. Here are listed the ones, that are only available in bootstrap3 template pack:

label_class = ‘’

Default set to ''. This class will be applied to every label, this is very useful to do horizontal forms. Set it for example like this label_class = col-lg-2.

field_class = ‘’

Default set to ''. This class will be applied to every div controls wrapping a field. This is useful for doing horizontal forms. Set it for example like this field_class = col-lg-8.

Bootstrap 4 Helper attributes

All previous, bootstrap (version 2 and 3) attributes are also settable in bootstrap 4 template pack FormHelpers. Here are listed the ones, that are only available in bootstrap4 template pack:

use_custom_control = True

Enables the optional UI customization of the template pack for radio, checkbox, select and file field. Useful when you already have customization based on the default interpretation of the template pack. Setting to False results in the standard bootstrap classes being applied for radio and checkbox, and Django rendering for file field. See table below for examples.

The file field requires additional JS to enable its functionality, it is provided within the template pack as vanilla JS.

Defaults to True.

Standard	Optional

Custom Helper attributes

Maybe you would like FormHelper to do some extra thing that is not currently supported or maybe you have a very specific use case. The good thing is that you can add extra attributes and crispy-forms will automatically inject them within template context. Let’s see an example, to make things clear.

We want some forms to have uppercase labels, and for that we would like to set a helper attribute name labels_uppercase to True or False. So we go and set in our helper:

helper.labels_uppercase = True

What will happen is crispy-forms will inject a Django template variable named {{ labels_uppercase }} with its corresponding value within its templates, including field.html, which is the template in charge of rendering a field when using crispy-forms. So we can go into that template and customize it. We will need to get familiar with it, but it’s quite easy to follow; in the end it’s just a Django template.

When we find where labels get rendered, this chunk of code to be more precise:

{% if field.label and not field|is_checkbox and form_show_labels %}
    <label for="{{ field.id_for_label }}" class="control-label {% if field.field.required %}requiredField{% endif %}">
        {{ field.label|safe }}{% if field.field.required %}<span class="asteriskField">*</span>{% endif %}
    </label>
{% endif %}

The line that we would change wold end up like this:

{% if not labels_uppercase %}{{ field.label|safe }}{% else %}{{ field.label|safe|upper }}{% endif %}{% if field.field.required %}

Now we only need to override field template, for that you may want to check section Overriding layout objects templates.

Warning

Be careful, depending on what you aim to do, sometimes using dynamic layouts is a better option, check section Updating layouts on the go.