DateTimeField – Django Forms

DateTimeField in Django Forms is a date field, for taking input of date and time from user. The default widget for this input is DateTimeInput. It Normalizes to: A Python datetime.datetime object. It validates that the given value is either a datetime.datetime, datetime.date or string formatted in a particular datetime format.
DateTimeField has one optional arguments:

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

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

['%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S',    # '2006-10-25 14:30:59'
 '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M',       # '2006-10-25 14:30'
 '%Y-%m-%d',             # '2006-10-25'
 '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S',    # '10/25/2006 14:30:59'
 '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M',       # '10/25/2006 14:30'
 '%m/%d/%Y',             # '10/25/2006'
 '%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S',    # '10/25/06 14:30:59'
 '%m/%d/%y %H:%M',       # '10/25/06 14:30'
 '%m/%d/%y']             # '10/25/06'

Syntax

field_name = forms.DateTimeField(**options)

Django form DateTimeField Explanation

Illustration of DateTimeField 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.

• How to Create a Basic Project using MVT in Django?
• How to Create 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.DateTimeField( )

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

Thus, an geeks_field DateTimeField is created by replacing “_” with ” “. It is a field to input date and time instances from a user.

How to use DateTimeField ?

DateTimeField is used for input of date and time in the database. One can input date and time, Last Date of Submission, etc. Till now we have discussed how to implement DateTimeField 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 datetime.datetime 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 DateTimeField.

So it accepts a date input only otherwise validation errors will be seen. Now let’s try entering a valid date into the field.

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.

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 DateTimeField 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.

pener” target=”_blank”>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.