Override Django inlineformset_factory has_changed() to always return True

Question

Hi,

I am using the django inlineformset_factory function.

a = get_object_or_404(ModelA, pk=id)

FormSet = inlineformset_factory(ModelA, ModelB)
if request.method == 'POST':
    metaform = FormSet (instance=a, data=request.POST)

    if metaform.is_valid():
        f = metaform.save(commit=False)

        for instance in f:
           instance.updated_by = request.user
           instance.save()
else:
    metaform = FormSet(instance=a)

return render_to_response('nodes/form.html', {'form':metaform})

What is happening is that if I change any of the data then everything works ok and all the data gets updated. However if I don't change any of the data then the data is not updated. i.e. only entries which are changed go through the for loop to be saved. I guess this makes sense as there is no point saving data if it has not changed. However I need to go through and save every object in the form regardless of whether it has any changes on not.

So my question is how do I override this so that it goes through and saves every record whether it has any changes or not?

Hope this makes sense

Thanks

Answer 1

If the updated_by field is always going to be the same for every ModelB instance related to a particular ModelA instance, shouldn't you just store it once on the parent rather than on every child?

Answer 2

inlineformset_factory can, I think, take a form object. What I believe you could do is create a forms.ModelForm, then add a field like always_update = forms.IntegerField(required=False) and then in the __init__ function do something like self.fields['always_update'].initial = int(time.time()). I believe this will force it to update, but you'll have to test this.