Formify Helper

Workflow

Unlike other form rendering packages, below template tags

{% form_tag %}
{% render_form %}
{% render_submit %}
{% render_field %}
{% render_form_errors %}

Just accept arguments from the templates, and pass the arguments to the formify_helper to render them.

So core logic is in the formify_helper

The benefit of this approach is it can be easy to customize the logic.

Global Formify Helper

The default formify helper is django_formify.tailwind.formify_helper.FormifyHelper

We can create a class to inherit and override some methods to change the rendering logic.

To change the default global formify helper, just add below code to your Django settings

FORMIFY = {
    "formify_helper": "xxxx",
}

Leveraging Python OOP, you can override some methods of the formify helper to customize the rendering behavior.

{% form_tag %}               -> formify_helper.render_form_tag
{% render_form %}            -> formify_helper.render_form
{% render_submit %}          -> formify_helper.render_submit
{% render_field %}           -> formify_helper.render_field
{% render_form_errors %}     -> formify_helper.render_form_errors

Field Dispatcher

To make logic of rendering field more clean, there is a field dispatcher in the render_field method.

For example, if a field is using TextInput widget, it will try to use below methods to render

text_input
fallback

Notes:

1. If text_input method is not found in the formify_helper instance, fallback method will be used to render the field.

2. This can help developers to control rendering behavior of the specific widgets.

If you have built some custom widgets, just add a method to the formify_helper and make the final result look well, this is much cleaner.

Formify Helper Variables

Formify Helper have some variables such as:

form_show_errors = True
form_show_labels = True
field_wrapper_class = "field-wrapper mb-3"

Developers can override or add more variables to change the behavior.

In the final Django html, just access the variable using {{ formify_helper.form_show_errors }}

For example, to control if rendering field label or not

{% if field.label and formify_helper.form_show_labels %}

{% endif %}

Formify Helper in Form

You can also create formify helper for the form to override the global formify helper.

from django_formify.tailwind.formify_helper import FormifyHelper

class ExampleForm(forms.Form):

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.formify_helper = FormifyHelper()
        self.formify_helper.field_wrapper_class = "another-field-wrapper"