How to Create a form using Django Forms

This article explains how to create a basic form using various form fields and attributes. Creating a form in Django is very similar to creating a model, you define the fields you want and specify their types. For example, a registration form might need fields like First Name (CharField), Roll Number (IntegerField), and so on.

Syntax: 

Field_name = forms.FieldType(attributes)

Now to render this form into a view, move to views.py and create a home_view as below. 

Example: Creating a Django Form

Consider a project named geeksforgeeks with an app called geeks.

Refer to the following articles to check how to create a project and an app in Django. 

• How to Create a Basic Project using MVT in Django?
• How to Create an App in Django ?

Step 1: Create the Form Class

Inside your app directory, create a file called forms.py where you will define all your forms. Use Django’s forms.Form class to create a form.

In forms.py, add the following code:

from django import forms

class InputForm(forms.Form):
    first_name = forms.CharField(max_length=200)
    last_name = forms.CharField(max_length=200)
    roll_number = forms.IntegerField(help_text="Enter 6 digit roll number")
    password = forms.CharField(widget=forms.PasswordInput())

Let's explain what exactly is happening, left side denotes the name of the field and to the right of it, you define various functionalities of an input field correspondingly. A field's syntax is denoted as 

Step 2: Render the Form in a View

In your app’s views.py, import the form and create a view to render it:

from django.shortcuts import render
from .forms import InputForm

# Create your views here.
def home_view(request):
    context ={}
    context['form']= InputForm()
    return render(request, "home.html", context)

Here, an instance of the form is created and passed to the template context.

Step 3: Display the Form in a Template

Create or edit the home.html template inside your templates folder and add the following:

<form action="" method="post">
    {% csrf_token %}
    {{ form }}
    <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

Now, visit http://localhost:8000/ to see your form rendered.

Improving Form Display

The default form rendering ({{ form }}) is functional but basic. Django provides convenient methods to change the form layout:

• {{ form.as_table }}: renders the form fields wrapped in <tr> table rows
• {{ form.as_p }}: renders form fields inside <p> tags
• {{ form.as_ul }}: renders form fields inside <li> list items

Customizing Individual Fields

You can render individual fields separately using:

{{ form.first_name }}

{{ form.last_name }}

Note: When rendering fields manually, make sure to handle validation and errors properly, and always include CSRF tokens in your form. Otherwise, you risk breaking Django’s built-in form validation.