[Django]-How to change help text of a django form field?

by

28👍

✅

I got it working with following code.

class _GroupMessageForm(ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        model = GroupMessage


class GroupMessageForm(_GroupMessageForm):

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(_GroupMessageForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['employees'].help_text = '<br/>Hold down "Control" to select more.'
👤Sudhanshu Mishra

73👍

For Django >= 1.6 (docs):

class GroupForm(ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = GroupMessage
        help_texts = {
            'group': 'Group to which this message belongs to',
        }
👤laffuste

8👍

There are multiple ways to do it.

1) You can add help_text to definition of the field in the Model, as Bobort said in the comment above:

class GroupMessage(Message):
    group = models.ForeignKey(Group, related_name='+', help_text='Some text')

This way is useful if you want this help_text stay the same, no matter what ModelForm you use. For example you can create two ModelForm forms for GroupMessage model and they both will have help_text from this model.

2) You can override model field in form field like that:

class GroupForm(ModelForm):
    group = forms.ModelChoseField(label='Group', help_text='Some text')

    class Meta:
        model = GroupMessage

Such way is useful when you need to change not only help_text but for example label or queryset or type of field.

3) You can do it as laffuste above:

class GroupForm(ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = GroupMessage
        help_texts = {
            'group': 'Group to which this message belongs to',
        }

This way is useful if you only want to change help_text for one or more fields.

4) And another way to do it is something like you did:

class GroupForm(ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = GroupMessage

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(GroupForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['employees'].help_text = 'Some text'

But this solution needs small clarification. If you will use this form in template like that:

{% for field in form %}
    {{ field }}
    {{ field.help_text }}
{% endfor %}

It’s fine. But for example in case:

{% for field in form.visible_fields %}
    {{ field }}
    {{ field.help_text }}
{% endfor %}

help_text will be empty, because help_text in BoundField was filled before you set it by yourself. So solution will be to add self['employees'].help_text = 'Some text' to __init__ or to use {{ field.field.help_text }} in template.

This solution is useful in cases when you want to set help_text by some conditions, for example if specific argument was passed to form initialization or something else.

Hope it will help someone.

👤renkse

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