Can django widget_tweaks render out input as textarea box?

Question

I want to render out an input box as textarea with widget_tweaks in Django.

This is my code:

                <div class="form-row">
                <div class="form-group col-md-6">
                    <label>More information *</label>
                    {% render_field form.info class="form-control" %}
                </div>                
            </div>

Everything is working fine, but it renders out as <input> tag. Is there any way to render it out as <textarea> without changing the models from CharField to TextField? I want to have a bigger box so there is more space to write the text. I know I can add a class that could change the size of the input box, but the textarea tag would be easier.

Answer 1

You can render CharField as textarea by specifying widget in your forms.py.

text = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)

or to set default width and height of textarea

text = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea(attrs={"rows":3, "cols":10}))

There are two ways to incorporate this to your forms.py.

1. preferred way especially if you want to add widgets to multiple fields.

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        fields= ('text', 'field2')
        widgets = {
            'text': forms.Textarea(attrs={"rows":3, "cols":10})),
            'field2': forms.RadioSelect(attrs= {
                 'class': 'choice_class'})
        }

Note that although widget can add class, I think it is better to add css class or id using widget-tweaks at template level rather than widget.

2. another way in forms.py. This way works well when you want to add widgets to one or two fields.

class MyModelForm(forms.ModelForm):
    text = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea(attrs={"rows":3, "cols":10})

    class Meta:
         model = MyModel
         fields = ('text', 'field2',)