Django: How to set initial values for a field in an inline model formset?

Question

I have what I think should be a simple problem. I have an inline model formset, and I'd like to make a select field have a default selected value of the currently logged in user. In the view, I'm using Django's Authentication middleware, so getting the user is a simple matter of accessing request.user.

What I haven't been able to figure out, though, is how to set that user as the default selected value in a select box (ModelChoiceField) containing a list of users. Can anyone help me with this?

Answer 1

I'm not sure how to handle this in inline formsets, but the following approach will work for normal Forms and ModelForms:

You can't set this as part of the model definition, but you can set it during the form initialization:

def __init__(self, logged_in_user, *args, **kwargs):
    super(self.__class__, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    self.fields['my_user_field'].initial = logged_in_user

...

form = MyForm(request.user)

Answer 2

Standard Method

In your view do something like this: (Untested)

formset = ArticleFormSet(initial=[{'logged_on_user': request.user}, ...])

Where 'logged_of_user' is the field name of a single form instance.

See:

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/forms/formsets/#using-initial-data-with-a-formset

post-POST Method

You can also provide the user data via the request once the data is posted. And apply it in your form processing to whatever models you need.