Django inlineformsets and general noobishness

I'm sorry to ask two questions about similar topics in one day but my noobishness with django has just completely taken over. Basically I have two models:

class Story(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=1000)
    text = models.CharField(max_length=5000)
    date = models.DateField(default=datetime.date.today, editable=False)
    likes = models.IntegerField(default='0')
    dislikes = models.IntegerField(default='0')
    views = models.IntegerField(default='0')
    author = models.ForeignKey('Author', related_name="username")

    class Author(models.Model):
username = models.CharField(max_length=120, unique=True)
email = models.EmailField(blank=True)
firstname = models.CharField(max_length=500, blank=True)
lastname = models.CharField(max_length=500, blank=True)

as you can the idea is that someone submits a story and their name goes into the author's table. Pretty simple stuff. My problem is creating a form that will allow a user to submit their story and their name. I've tried an inlineformset and had no luck I just can't find a way to perform what I know is just a simple AND sql statement behind the scenes.

Here are my form models: StoryAuthorFormSet = inlineformset_factory(Author, Story)

class StoryForm(ModelForm):
        class Meta:
            model = Story
            exclude = ('date', 'views', 'likes', 'dislikes', 'author')

and here is my view

def submit_story(request):
if request.method == 'POST':
    form = StoryForm(request.POST)
    if form.is_valid:
        #watch this nest part be aware of the author bit
        author = form.save(commit=False)
        story = StoryAuthorFormSet(request.POST, instance=author)
        if author_formset.is_valid():
            story.save()
            author_formset.save()
            return HttpResponseRedirect('/thanks/')
else:
    form = StoryForm()
    author_formset = StoryAuthorFormSet(instance=Author())
    return render_to_response('submit/submit_story.html', locals(), context_instance=RequestContext(request))

I realise their is probably a simple solution that I've missed...but I am stumped any ideas would be greatly greatly appreciated.....so much so that I'll do some free Clojure and Erlang programming for anybody who needs it!

Solution

An inline formset is not required in your example. I'd use that only if I needed to submit several stories at once for a given author.

Also there are things that I'd change about your models.

title = models.CharField(max_length=1000)
text = models.CharField(max_length=5000)

A TextField might be more appropriate, at least for the text part.

I would resolve it like this: create an AuthorForm and use both that and your existing StoryForm in the same view.

So, the logic would be the following:

author_form = AuthorForm(request.POST)
if author_form.is_valid():
    author = author_form.save()
    story_form = StoryForm(request.POST)
    if story_form.is_valid():
        story = story_form.save(commit=False)
        story.author = author
        story.save()

The instance parameter let's use specify an already existing model for the form. E.g you want to update a already existing database entry.