When using HTML form renderer in DRF, can anyone think of a nice way to auto generate some indication of "required" field in DRF, by hook or crook? I mean before I submit the form, some indication on the field that it is required - the Browsable API it will show right in the form what the error is but only after submitting.
Whether I am using technique as shown here for browseable API with field level HTML forms (instead of just raw/JSON form):
django-rest-framework - autogenerate form in browsable API?
Or I am using TemplateHTMLRenderer with a call to render_form as discussed in docs here:
http://www.django-rest-framework.org/topics/html-and-forms/#rendering-forms
I don't see a simple way to make my required fields rendered as required. So say we have like
#models.py
class Foobar(model.Models):
foo = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, default='')
bar = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=False)
The best I can think of is making my own template/snippet for each type of field "required-text-field.html", "required-checkbox.html", etc and using the style declaration in the serializer as shown here:
http://www.django-rest-framework.org/topics/html-and-forms/#field-styles
That's assuming I am understanding this, have not played with it yet to see.
But I would love to see a way to auto-generate the field with/without a required flag as appropriate (even just an asterisk, or applying a CSS class) based on the model definition.
Rambling: The goal here was to avoid writing my own forms, having DRF generate the form for me in custom views. As opposed to writing my own forms using tying them into AJAX I figured templates, render_form, and some format checks would suffice. But now I'm thinking DRF is built for back-end and dev, not front-end, and maybe I should plan to write my own forms if it will be end-user visible? Also I could have CSS files and select based on name, calling render_form then applying hand spun styles, would be less work than the HTML + the CSS. Should I review Django (just Django, not DRF) Forms and re-use serializer as validation?...
I can see 2 ways:
you can define your own template pack, look at the existing ones in the sources (e.g. 'rest_framework/horizontal/input.html') - you can check if field is required and according to this flag, set some css. you do not need something extra, especially "input-readonly.html" - just make your own copy of input.html, add few if-s and it will work.
or you can call OPTIONS on the API endpoint to get all the necessary information about fields, not only required, but readonly and allowed values for some selects - this is if you can update your forms from javascript