Installation

Installing django-crispy-forms

Install latest stable version into your python environment using pip:

pip install django-crispy-forms

If you want to install development version (unstable), you can do so doing:

pip install git+git://github.com/django-crispy-forms/django-crispy-forms.git@main#egg=django-crispy-forms

Or, if you’d like to install the development version as a git repository (so you can git pull updates), use the -e flag with pip install, like so:

pip install -e git+git://github.com/django-crispy-forms/django-crispy-forms.git@main#egg=django-crispy-forms

Once installed add crispy_forms to your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'crispy_forms',
)

In production environments, always activate Django template cache loader. This is available since Django 1.2 and what it does is basically load templates once, then cache the result for every subsequent render. This leads to a significant performance improvement. To see how to set it up refer to the fabulous Django docs page.

Template packs

Since version 1.1.0, django-crispy-forms has built-in support for different CSS frameworks, known as template packs within django-crispy-forms:

  • bootstrap Bootstrap is crispy-forms’s default template pack, version 2 of the popular simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and Javascript for user interfaces from Twitter.

  • bootstrap3 Twitter Bootstrap version 3.

  • bootstrap4 support for Twitter Bootstrap version 4.

  • uni-form Uni-form is a nice looking, well structured, highly customizable, accessible and usable forms.

In addition the following template packs are available through separately maintained projects.

  • foundation Foundation In the creator’s words, “The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world.” This template pack is available through crispy-forms-foundation

  • tailwind Tailwind A utility first framework. This template pack is available through crispy-tailwind

  • Bootstrap 5 Support for newer versions of Bootstrap will be in separate template packs. This starts with version 5 and is available through crispy-bootstrap5

If your form CSS framework is not supported and it’s open source, you can create a crispy-forms-templatePackName project. Please let me know, so I can link to it. Documentation on How to create your own template packs is provided.

You can set your default template pack for your project using the CRISPY_TEMPLATE_PACK Django settings variable:

CRISPY_TEMPLATE_PACK = 'uni_form'

Please check the documentation of your template pack package for the correct value of the CRISPY_TEMPLATE_PACK setting (there are packages which provide more than one template pack).

Setting media files

crispy-forms does not include static files. You will need to include the proper corresponding media files yourself depending on what CSS framework (Template pack) you are using. This might involve one or more CSS and JS files. Read CSS framework’s docs for help on how to set it up.