FilePathField – Django Forms

FilePathField in Django Forms is a string field, for input of path of a particular file from server. It is used for select inputs from the user. One needs to specify which folders should be used in FilePathField and field displays the inputs in form of a select field. The default widget for this input is Select.
FilePathField has following required and optional arguments:

• path:- The absolute path to the directory whose contents you want listed. This directory must exist.
• recursive :- If False (the default) only the direct contents of path will be offered as choices. If True, the directory will be descended into recursively and all descendants will be listed as choices.
• match :- A regular expression pattern; only files with names matching this expression will be allowed as choices.
• allow_files :- Optional. Either True or False. Default is True. Specifies whether files in the specified location should be included. Either this or allow_folders must be True.
• allow_folders :- Optional. Either True or False. Default is False. Specifies whether folders in the specified location should be included. Either this or allow_files must be True.

Syntax

field_name = forms.FilePathField(**options)

Django form FilePathField Explanation

Illustration of FilePathField 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.  

Python3

from django import forms


class GeeksForm(forms.Form):
    name = forms.CharField()
    geeks_field = forms.FilePathField(path = "geeksforgeeks/")

Add the geeks app to INSTALLED_APPS 

Python3

# 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, 

Python3

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. 

HTML

<form method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    {% csrf_token %}
    {{ form.as_p }}
    <input type = "submit" value = "Submit">
</form>

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

Python3

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 FilePathField is created by replacing “_” with ” “. It is a field to input paths of file from the user. 

How to use FilePathField ?

FilePathField is used for input of paths of file in the database. One can input Files from particular folder etc. Till now we have discussed how to implement FilePathField 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,

Python3

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.POST:
        temp = request.POST
        print(temp)
    return render(request, "home.html", context)

Being a select field it accepts a select input only otherwise validation errors will be seen. Now let’s try selecting a choice from 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 FilePathField 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.