[Django]-(Django) Trim whitespaces from charField

When you’re using a ModelForm instance to create/edit a model, the model’s clean() method is guaranteed to be called. So, if you want to strip whitespace from a field, you just add a clean() method to your model (no need to edit the ModelForm class):

class Employee(models.Model):
    """(Workers, Staff, etc)"""
    name = models.CharField(blank=True, null=True, max_length=100)

    def clean(self):
        if self.name:
            self.name = self.name.strip()

I find the following code snippet useful- it trims the whitespace for all of the model’s fields which subclass either CharField or TextField (so this also catches URLField fields) without needing to specify the fields individually:

def clean(self):
    for field in self._meta.fields:
        if isinstance(field, (models.CharField, models.TextField)):
            value = getattr(self, field.name)
            if value:
                setattr(self, field.name, value.strip())

Someone correctly pointed out that you should not be using null=True in the name declaration. Best practice is to avoid null=True for string fields, in which case the above simplifies to:

def clean(self):
    for field in self._meta.fields:
        if isinstance(field, (models.CharField, models.TextField)):
            setattr(self, field.name, getattr(self, field.name).strip())

If you have so many data-fields to be trimmed, why not try extending CharField?

from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

class TrimCharField(models.CharField):
   description = _(
       "CharField that ignores leading" 
       " and trailing spaces in data")

   def get_prep_value(self, value)
       return trim(super(TrimCharField, self
           ).get_prep_value(value))

   def pre_save(self, model_instance, add):
       return trim(super(TrimCharField, self
           ).pre_save(model_instance, add))

UPDATE:
For Django versions <= 1.7 if you want to extend field, you are to use models.SubfieldBase metaclass. So here it will be like:

class TrimCharField(six.with_metaclass(
    models.SubfieldBase, models.CharField)):

Django 1.9 offers a simple way of accomplishing this. By using the strip argument whose default is True, you can make sure that leading and trailing whitespace is trimmed. You can only do that in form fields though in order to make sure that user input is trimmed. But that still won’t protect the model itself. If you still want to do that, you can use any of the methods above.

For more information, visit https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/ref/forms/fields/#charfield

I’m handling this in views as a decorator. I’m also truncating field values that exceed a CharField max_length value.

from django import forms
from django import models
from django.db.models.fields import FieldDoesNotExist
from django.utils.encoding import smart_str

class CleanCharField(forms.CharField):
        """Django's default form handling drives me nuts wrt trailing
        spaces.  http://code.djangoproject.com/attachment/ticket/6362
        """
        def clean(self, value):
            if value is None:
                value = u''
            value = smart_str(value).strip()
            value = super(forms.CharField, self).clean(value)
            return value

def truncate_charfield(model):
    """decorator to truncate CharField data to model field max_length.
    Apply to the clean method in views Form:

    @truncate_charfield(MyModel)
    def clean(self):
        ...
    """
    def wrap(f):
        def wrapped_f(*args):
            f(*args)
            d = args[0].cleaned_data
            for field in model._meta.fields:
                try:
                    mf = model._meta.get_field(field.name)
                    if isinstance(mf, models.CharField) and field.name in d:
                        d[field.name] = d[field.name][:mf.max_length]
                except FieldDoesNotExist:
                    pass
            return d
        return wrapped_f
    return wrap

If you’re still not on Django 1.9+ shame on you (and me) and drop this into your form. This is similar to @jeremy-lewis’s answer but I had several problems with his.

def clean_text_fields(self):
    # TODO: Django 1.9, use on the model strip=True
    # https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/ref/forms/fields/#charfield
    from django.forms.fields import CharField
    cd = self.cleaned_data
    for field_name, field in self.fields.items():
        if isinstance(field, CharField):
            cd[field_name] = cd[field_name].strip()
            if self.fields[field_name].required and not cd[field_name]:
                self.add_error(field_name, "This is a required field.")

def clean(self):
    self.clean_text_fields()