Multidimensional form requirements

[Scot Hacker]

I need to build a pretty complex / non-standard form and am looking for advice on the overall architecture. Consider the following models:

class UserProfile(User):
  ... standard set of fields


class ProfileExtra():
  ForeignKey(UserProfile)
  extratype (e.g. skill, work experience, website, publication, etc.)
  ... another set of fields

The idea is that, when editing a profile, a user can add an unlimited number of these ProfileExtras to their profile. So a user might end up with:

Profile
  name
  title
  about
  photo
Skills
  skill 1
  skill 2
Publications
  pub1
  pub2
  pub3
Jobs
  job1
  job2

etc. When editing their profiles, they'll be able to add/edit/delete any of these *in place* without leaving the page (it'll be ajax.)

So we have one core model and "n" number of related models. Obviously, a standard ModelForm can't encompass all of this cleanly. There are several things about this that just don't mesh well with Django's forms library. It deals with multiple model types, it deals with unknown additional numbers of a related model, it needs to be all ajax.

I'm really not sure about the best way to put it all together. I'm thinking we probably won't use Django forms at all - just do standard JS to create/destroy html form inputs on the page dynamically. Consider the whole thing as one big form element, and it all gets submitted every time. In the receiving view, pull apart the POST request and process it all manually. Advantage: total control. Disadvantage: we lose all the magic provided by model and modelform validation.

Another thought is that we could make e.g. "skills" into a single field and use ArrayField (we're on postgres) to store all of the related skills. Need to experiment with that.

Have any of you solved a similar problem? Are good ways to meet the requirements while still being able to take advantage of Django form validation goodness? I'm all ears. Thanks.

./s

[Babatunde Akinyanmi]

I don't know if I'm off target but.....

I'm presently work on something like this where I have have to save three models at a go. One model is a stand alone while the other two have a foreign key to the stand alone model which is a many to one relationship. So to implement the many to one where I can save many of the dependent models together with the standalone models, I made use of inline formset and no problems thus far.

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[Scot Hacker]

On Friday, April 8, 2016 at 11:27:01 AM UTC-7, Tundebabzy wrote:

I don't know if I'm off target but.....

I'm presently work on something like this where I have have to save three models at a go. One model is a stand alone while the other two have a foreign key to the stand alone model which is a many to one relationship. So to implement the many to one where I can save many of the dependent models together with the standalone models, I made use of inline formset and no problems thus far.

It's interesting - Django provides non-model forms, model forms, and formsets for dealing with multiple instances of the same model, but no way to build a single form that deals with multiple model types simultaneously. At this point, it's looking pretty much like I'll solve this outside of the Django box, by generating JSON representing the collection of data and using Angular to add/edit to the set with client-side validation, then post-processing the results in a Django view.

./s

[C. Kirby]

If you are already add/deleting in place using ajax you can use that to your advantage. Don't think of it as a single form - each ajax capable component (profile, extra1, extra2, extra3) is a separate form. You have a view that populates your template with multiple forms - the profile and each extra. Then each of those has an ajax endpoint for update/delete. You can also have and add extra button that has an endpoint that provided the form via ajax, and its save endpoint is the save/update endpoint you already have.