django/docs/ref/forms/widgets.txt

.. _ref-forms-widgets:

=======
Widgets
=======

.. module:: django.forms.widgets
   :synopsis: Django's built-in form widgets.
   
.. currentmodule:: django.forms

A widget is Django's representation of a HTML input element. The widget
handles the rendering of the HTML, and the extraction of data from a GET/POST
dictionary that corresponds to the widget.

Django provides a representation of all the basic HTML widgets, plus some
commonly used groups of widgets:

.. class:: TextInput
    Text input: ``<input type='text' ...>``

.. class:: PasswordInput
    Password input: ``<input type='password' ...>``

.. class:: HiddenInput
    Hidden input: ``<input type='hidden' ...>``

.. class:: MultipleHiddenInput
    Multiple ``<input type='hidden' ...>`` widgets.

.. class:: FileInput
    File upload input: ``<input type='file' ...>``

.. class:: DateTimeInput
    Date/time input as a simple text box: ``<input type='text' ...>``

    **New in Django development version:**

.. class:: Textarea
    Text area: ``<textarea>...</textarea>``

.. class:: CheckboxInput
    Checkbox: ``<input type='checkbox' ...>``

.. class:: Select
    Select widget: ``<select><option ...>...</select>``

.. class:: NullBooleanSelect
    Select widget with options 'Unknown', 'Yes' and 'No'

.. class:: SelectMultiple
    Select widget allowing multiple selection: ``<select
    multiple='multiple'>...</select>``

.. class:: RadioSelect
    A list of radio buttons:
    
    .. code-block:: html
    
        <ul>
          <li><input type='radio' ...></li>
          ...
        </ul>

.. class:: CheckboxSelectMultiple
    A list of checkboxes:
    
    .. code-block:: html
    
        <ul>
          <li><input type='checkbox' ...></li>
          ...
        </ul>

.. class:: MultiWidget
    Wrapper around multiple other widgets

.. class:: SplitDateTimeWidget
    Wrapper around two ``TextInput`` widgets: one for the date, and one for the
    time.

Specifying widgets
------------------

.. attribute:: Form.widget

Whenever you specify a field on a form, Django will use a default widget
that is appropriate to the type of data that is to be displayed. To find
which widget is used on which field, see the documentation for the
built-in Field classes.

However, if you want to use a different widget for a field, you can -
just use the 'widget' argument on the field definition. For example::

    class CommentForm(forms.Form):
        name = forms.CharField()
        url = forms.URLField()
        comment = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)

This would specify a form with a comment that uses a larger Textarea widget,
rather than the default TextInput widget.

Customizing widget instances
----------------------------

When Django renders a widget as HTML, it only renders the bare minimum
HTML - Django doesn't add a class definition, or any other widget-specific
attributes. This means that all 'TextInput' widgets will appear the same
on your web page.

If you want to make one widget look different to another, you need to
specify additional attributes for each widget. When you specify a
widget, you can provide a list of attributes that will be added to the
rendered HTML for the widget.

For example, take the following simple form::

    class CommentForm(forms.Form):
        name = forms.CharField()
        url = forms.URLField()
        comment = forms.CharField()

This form will include three default TextInput widgets, with default rendering -
no CSS class, no extra attributes. This means that the input boxes provided for
each widget will be rendered exactly the same::

    >>> f = CommentForm(auto_id=False)
    >>> f.as_table()
    <tr><th>Name:</th><td><input type="text" name="name" /></td></tr>
    <tr><th>Url:</th><td><input type="text" name="url"/></td></tr>
    <tr><th>Comment:</th><td><input type="text" name="comment" /></td></tr>


On a real web page, you probably don't want every widget to look the same. You
might want a larger input element for the comment, and you might want the 'name'
widget to have some special CSS class. To do this, you use the ``attrs``
argument when creating the widget:

.. attribute:: Widget.attrs

For example::

    class CommentForm(forms.Form):
        name = forms.CharField(
                    widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'class':'special'}))
        url = forms.URLField()
        comment = forms.CharField(
                   widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'size':'40'}))

Django will then include the extra attributes in the rendered output::

    >>> f = CommentForm(auto_id=False)
    >>> f.as_table()
    <tr><th>Name:</th><td><input type="text" name="name" class="special"/></td></tr>
    <tr><th>Url:</th><td><input type="text" name="url"/></td></tr>
    <tr><th>Comment:</th><td><input type="text" name="comment" size="40"/></td></tr>