Remind Me: Initial Data in a Django class-based Form

I love Django’s class-based way of handling forms. You name the class, articulate each field (data point of your form), and attach it to a view. Voila. But what happens when you want some initial data in the form?

Initial to the rescue!

What your class might look like:

class PersonForm(forms.Form): first_name = forms.CharField(max_length=100) last_name = forms.CharField(max_length=100) gender = forms.CharField(max_length=1) hair_color = forms.CharField(max_length=256)

If you now wanted to initialize your form for males with blonde hair, include this snippet in your view:

form = PersonForm(initial = { ‘gender’ : “M”, ‘hair_color’ : “blonde” } )

Then pass that form as part of your render return:

return render_to_response(‘add_person.htm’, { ‘form’ : form })

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