Django: Overloading __init__ for Custom Forms

Question

I am making a custom form object in django which has an overloaded __init__ method. The purpose of overloading the method is to dynamically generate drop-down boxes based on the new parameters.

For example,

class TicketForm(forms.Form):
    Type = Type.GetTicketTypeField()

    def __init__(self, data=None, files=None, auto_id='id_%s', prefix=None,
                  initial=None, label_suffix=':', empty_permitted=False, ticket=None):
        if ticket:
           self.__class__.State = State.GetTicketStateField(ticket.Type)
        super(forms.BaseForm, self ).__init__(data=data, files=files, auto_id=auto_id, 
          prefix=prefix, initial=initial, label_suffix=label_suffix, empty_permitted=empty_permitted)

This solution does not work. It appears that the fields are created before the __init__ is called. I would assume this problem would be pretty common. What would be the django way of handling these classes of problems.

Answer 1

You can dynamically modify your form by using the self.fields dict. Something like this may work for you:

class TicketForm(forms.Form):

  Type = Type.GetTicketTypeField()

  def __init__(self, ticket, *args, **kwargs):
    super(TicketForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    self.fields['state'] = State.GetTicketStateField(ticket.Type)

Answer 2

I found a solution here. If there is a better solution, please post a reply.

class TicketForm(forms.Form):
   Type = Type.GetTicketTypeField()

   def __init__(self, ticket=None, *args, **kwargs):    
       super(TicketForm, self ).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
    if ticket:
     self.fields['State'] = State.GetTicketStateField(ticket.Type)