gadventures / django-remote-forms

A platform independent django form serializer

django-remote-forms

A package that allows you to serialize django forms, including fields and widgets into Python dictionary for easy conversion into JSON and expose over API

Please go through my djangocon US 2012 talk to understand the problem sphere, motivations, challenges and implementation of Remote Forms

Sample Implementation

If you don't mind digging around a little bit to learn about different the components that might be necessary for an implementation of django-remote-forms, check out django Remote Admin django-remote-admin

Usage

Minimal Example

from django_remote_forms.forms import RemoteForm

form = LoginForm()
remote_form = RemoteForm(form)
remote_form_dict = remote_form.as_dict()

Upon converting the dictionary into JSON, it looks like this:

{
    "is_bound": false,
    "non_field_errors": [],
    "errors": {},
    "title": "LoginForm",
    "fields": {
        "username": {
            "title": "CharField",
            "required": true,
            "label": "Username",
            "initial": null,
            "help_text": "This is your django username",
            "error_messages": {
                "required": "This field is required.",
                "invalid": "Enter a valid value."
            },
            "widget": {
                "title": "TextInput",
                "is_hidden": false,
                "needs_multipart_form": false,
                "is_localized": false,
                "is_required": true,
                "attrs": {
                    "maxlength": "30"
                },
                "input_type": "text"
            },
            "min_length": 6,
            "max_length": 30
        },
        "password": {
            "title": "CharField",
            "required": true,
            "label": "Password",
            "initial": null,
            "help_text": "",
            "error_messages": {
                "required": "This field is required.",
                "invalid": "Enter a valid value."
            },
            "widget": {
                "title": "PasswordInput",
                "is_hidden": false,
                "needs_multipart_form": false,
                "is_localized": false,
                "is_required": true,
                "attrs": {
                    "maxlength": "128"
                },
                "input_type": "password"
            },
            "min_length": 6,
            "max_length": 128
        }
    },
    "label_suffix": ":",
    "prefix": null,
    "csrfmiddlewaretoken": "2M3MDgfzBmkmBrJ9U0MuYUdy8vgeCCgw",
    "data": {
        "username": null,
        "password": null
    }
}

An API endpoint serving remote forms

from django.core.serializers.json import simplejson as json, DjangoJSONEncoder
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.middleware.csrf import CsrfViewMiddleware
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt

from django_remote_forms.forms import RemoteForm

from my_awesome_project.forms import MyAwesomeForm


@csrf_exempt
def my_ajax_view(request):
    csrf_middleware = CsrfViewMiddleware()

    response_data = {}
    if request.method == 'GET':
        # Get form definition
        form = MyAwesomeForm()
    elif request.raw_post_data:
        request.POST = json.loads(request.raw_post_data)
        # Process request for CSRF
        csrf_middleware.process_view(request, None, None, None)
        form_data = request.POST.get('data', {})
        form = MyAwesomeForm(form_data)
        if form.is_valid():
            form.save()

    remote_form = RemoteForm(form)
    # Errors in response_data['non_field_errors'] and response_data['errors']
    response_data.update(remote_form.as_dict())

    response = HttpResponse(
        json.dumps(response_data, cls=DjangoJSONEncoder),
        mimetype="application/json"
    )

    # Process response for CSRF
    csrf_middleware.process_response(request, response)
    return response

Custom fields and widget

from django_remote_forms.forms import RemoteForm
from django_remote_forms.widgets import RemoteTextInput

form = LoginForm()
remote_form_config = {
    'widgets': {
        'MyCustomWidget': RemoteTextInput,
    },
}
remote_form = RemoteForm(form, config=remote_form_config)
remote_form_dict = remote_form.as_dict()