forms.Form should support a Meta class like forms.ModelForm

[django@…]

Please feel free to close this if you think my use case is too specific.

My use case is that I'd like to edit the widgets of a subclassed form.Form, the only way I can currently do this is by overriding the entire field or by overriding __init__()

Example:

class MyAuthenticationForm(django.contrib.auth.forms.AuthenticationForm):
    class Meta:
        wigets = {
            'username' : MyFancyWidget()
        }

Right now, I have to do something like (which isn't especially DRY):

class MyAuthenticationForm(django.contrib.auth.forms.AuthenticationForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(MyAuthenticationForm, self).__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['username'].widget = MyFancyWidget()

I argue that a form's Meta class will be a familiar concept to most django developers (as ModelForms are commonly used), and so extending to forms.Form would be natural.

Of course, if Meta were used for plain old forms.Form, then you could also use it as a means to exclude fields in the parent form (e.g. in this case you could do something like

class Meta:
    exclude = ('password',)

(not that that would be any use in this case)

[Tim Graham]

ModelFormMetaclass is very complex. I don't think adding it to Form is a good idea.

[Baptiste Mispelon]

I don't see what's "un-DRY" about extending the __init__() method and setting up the widget there.

I like the plain Form's (relative) simplicity and lack of a "magic" Meta class.
Overriding things in __init__() is the normal Python way of doing things.

All-in-all, I'm -0 on the idea.