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DateField – Django Forms

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DateField in Django Forms is a date field, for taking input of dates from user. The default widget for this input is DateInput. It Normalizes to: A Python datetime.date object. It validates that the given value is either a datetime.date, datetime.datetime or string formatted in a particular date format.

DateField has one optional arguments:

input_formats :- A list of formats used to attempt to convert a string to a valid datetime.date object.

If no input_formats argument is provided, the default input formats are:

['%Y-%m-%d',      # '2006-10-25'
 '%m/%d/%Y',      # '10/25/2006'
 '%m/%d/%y']      # '10/25/06' 

Syntax

field_name = forms.DateField(**options)

Django form DateField Explanation

Illustration of DateField using an Example. Consider a project named geeksforgeeks having an app named geeks.

Refer to the following articles to check how to create a project and an app in Django.

Enter the following code into forms.py file of geeks app.




from django import forms
  
# creating a form 
class GeeksForm(forms.Form):
    geeks_field = forms.DateField( )


Add the geeks app to INSTALLED_APPS




# Application definition
  
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'geeks',
]


Now to render this form into a view we need a view and a URL mapped to that URL. Let’s create a view first in views.py of geeks app,




from django.shortcuts import render
from .forms import GeeksForm
  
# Create your views here.
def home_view(request):
    context = {}
    context['form'] = GeeksForm()
    return render( request, "home.html", context)


Here we are importing that particular form from forms.py and creating an object of it in the view so that it can be rendered in a template.
Now, to initiate a Django form you need to create home.html where one would be designing the stuff as they like. Let’s create a form in home.html.




<form method = "GET">
    {{ form }}
    <input type = "submit" value = "Submit">
</form>


Finally, a URL to map to this view in urls.py




from django.urls import path
  
# importing views from views..py
from .views import home_view
  
urlpatterns = [
    path('', home_view ),
]


Let’s run the server and check what has actually happened, Run

Python manage.py runserver

django-datefield-forms

Thus, an geeks_field DateField is created by replacing “_” with ” “. It is a field to input date from the user.

How to use DateField ?

DateField is used for input of date in the database. One can input date of submission, birthdate, etc. Till now we have discussed how to implement DateField but how to use it in the view for performing the logical part. To perform some logic we would need to get the value entered into field into a python string instance.
In views.py,




from django.shortcuts import render
from .forms import GeeksForm
  
# Create your views here.
def home_view(request):
    context ={}
    form = GeeksForm()
    context['form']= form
    if request.GET:
        temp = request.GET['geeks_field']
        print(type(temp))
    return render(request, "home.html", context)


Let’s try something other than a date in a Datefield.
django-forms-datefield-validation

So it accepts a date input only otherwise validation errors will be seen. Now let’s try entering a valid date into the field.
django-forms-datefield-validated
Date data can be fetched using corresponding request dictionary. If method is GET, data would be available in request.GET and if post, request.POST correspondingly. In above example we have the value in temp which we can use for any purpose.

django-forms-datefield-input

Core Field Arguments

Core Field arguments are the arguments given to each field for applying some constraint or imparting a particular characteristic to a particular Field. For example, adding an argument required = False to DateField will enable it to be left blank by the user. Each Field class constructor takes at least these arguments. Some Field classes take additional, field-specific arguments, but the following should always be accepted:

Field Options Description
required By default, each Field class assumes the value is required, so to make it not required you need to set required=False
label The label argument lets you specify the “human-friendly” label for this field. This is used when the Field is displayed in a Form.
label_suffix The label_suffix argument lets you override the form’s label_suffix on a per-field basis.
widget The widget argument lets you specify a Widget class to use when rendering this Field. See Widgets for more information.
help_text The help_text argument lets you specify descriptive text for this Field. If you provide help_text, it will be displayed next to the Field when the Field is rendered by one of the convenience Form methods.
error_messages The error_messages argument lets you override the default messages that the field will raise. Pass in a dictionary with keys matching the error messages you want to override.
validators The validators argument lets you provide a list of validation functions for this field.
localize The localize argument enables the localization of form data input, as well as the rendered output.
disabled. The disabled boolean argument, when set to True, disables a form field using the disabled HTML attribute so that it won’t be editable by users.


Last Updated : 13 Feb, 2020
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