Forms

weppy provides the Form class to let you easily create forms for your application.

Let's see how to use it with an example:

from weppy import Field, Form

# create a form
@app.expose('/form')
def a():
    simple_form = Form({
        'name': Field(),
        'number': Field('int'),
        'type': Field(
            validation={'in': ['type1', 'type2']}
        )
    })
    if simple_form.accepted:
        inserted_number = form.vars.number
        #do something
    return dict(form=simple_form)

As you can see the Form class accepts a dict of Field objects for the input, we described them in the DAL chapter of the documentation.
Forms validate the input of the clients using their fields' validation: when the input passes the validation, the accepted attribute is set to True. The example above shows you that you can use this attribute to do stuffs when clients submit the form, and the submitted values are stored in form.vars.

Forms with DAL entities

Forms become quite handy to insert or edit data in your database, for this purpose weppy provides another class: DALForm.
The usage is the same of the form, except that you call it directly from your model:

# create a form for Post model
@app.expose('/dalform')
def b():
    form = Post.form()
    if form.accepted:
        #do something
    return dict(form=form)

where obviously the form() method of the models is a shortcut for the DALForm class.

– Wait, what if I need to edit a record?

You can pass the record as an argument in Model.form():

record = db.Post(id=1)
form = Post.form(record)

If you prefer, you can also use a record id:

form = Post.form(record_id=1)

Here is the complete list of parameters accepted by Form class:

parameter default description
_action None allows you to set the html action tag of the form
_method 'POST' set the form submit method (GET or POST)
_enctype 'multipart/form-data' allows you to change the encoding type for the submitted data
submit 'Submit' the text to show in the submit button
formstyle FormStyle the class used to style the form
csrf 'auto' Cross-Site Request Forgery protection
keepvalues False set if the form should keep the values in the input fields after submit
id_prefix None allows you to set a prefix for the id of the form fields
onvalidation None set an additional validation for the form
upload None define a url for download uploaded fields

DALForm class add some parameters to the Form ones:

parameter description
record as we seen above, set a record to edit
record_id alternative to record using id
fields list of fields (names) to show in the record
exclude_fields list of fields (names) not to be included in the form

Note: fields and exclude_fields parameters should not be used together. The idea behind the presence of these parameters is the advantage of the one above the other depending on the use case. If you need to hide just a few fields you'd better using the exclude_fields, while if you have to show only few fields of your table, you should use the fields one.

Uploads with forms

As we seen above, the upload parameter of forms needs an url for download. Let's focus a bit on uploads and see an example to completely understand this requirement.

Let's say you want to handle upload of avatar images from your user. So in your model/table you would have an upload field:

avatar = Field('upload')

and the forms produced by weppy will handle uploads for you. But how would you display this image in your template?
You need a streaming function like this:

from weppy import stream_file 

@app.expose("/download/<str:filename>")
def download(filename):
    stream_file(db, filename)

and then in your template you can create an img tag pointing to the download function you've just exposed:

<img src="{{=url('download', record.avatar')}}" />

The upload parameter of Form class has the same purpose: when you edit an existent record the form will display the image or file link for the existing one uploaded. In this example you would do:

record = db.Post(id=someid)
form = Post.form(record, upload=url('download'))

Custom validation

The onvalidation parameter of forms allows you to add custom validation logics on your form. You can pass a callable function, and it will be invoked after the form has processed the fields validators (which means that your function will be invoked only if there weren't errors with the fields validators).

Let's see what we're talking about with an example:

@app.expose("/myform"):
def myform():
    def process_form(form):
        if form.vars.double != form.vars.number*2:
            form.errors.double = "Double is incorrect!"

    form = Form(
        number=Field('int'), 
        double=Field('int'),
        onvalidation=process_form
    )
    return dict(form=form)

where basically the form check if the second number is the double of the first and return an error if the input is wrong.

You've just learnt how to use onvalidation parameter and that you can store errors in form.errors which is a sdict object like form.vars.

Also, you understood that Form accepts Field objects also as arguments.

Customizing forms

Good applications also need a good style. This is why weppy forms allows you to set a specific style with the formstyle attribute. But how you should edit the style of your form?
Well, in weppy the style of a form is decided by the FormStyle class.

Creating your style

sub-section under writing

Custom widgets

sub-section under writing