Need for some retrocompatibility guidance for devs, on new OrderedDict usage

[pascal chambon]

The change from SortedDict to OrderedDict in django1.7 was not a drop-in replacement, not only because several libs relied on the "hackish" keyOrder to sort field, but also because the methods below have disappeared, breaking libs (liek userprofile related stuffs) that made good use of them :

 insert(index, key, value)
Inserts the key, value pair before the item with the given index."

value_for_index(index)
Returns the value of the item at the given zero-based index.

Wouldn't it be helpful to add back these methods, in a subclass of OrderedDict ? Or to provide some guidance on how people are supposed to dynamically actiavte/deactivation form fields, now ?

It's unclear if completely replacing "myform.fields" with a new ordereddict, to achieve this, might be harmful.

[Tim Graham]

Unfortunately, customizing form field order using SortedDict isn't a documented solution so users are on there on when using private APIs like that (similarly the methods of SortedDict you mentioned aren't documented). However, I just committed an official API for customizing form field ordering in #5986 for 1.9, so hopefully that helps.

[pascal chambon]

These SortedDict methods were alas documented (​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/ref/utils/#module-django.utils.datastructures), that's why I fear a bunch of libs using dynamic forms may have relied on them.

Nice to see this field ordering API, I guess it'll prevent hacks in most cases.

Concerning the need to dynamically insert/remove the fields present in v1.7 forms (I have some needs like this for complex forms, checking for authentications at runtime), I'm not sure about the way to go, maybe using declarative Forms is not suited for that, and it'd be better to dynamically build form classes, than to rely on their init operations ?

[Tim Graham]

Oh, ​the SortedDict method deprecation should have been documented in the 1.5 release notes. If you care to draft a patch with upgrade suggestions, I'll be happy to review it.

It should still be possible to order fields using OrderedDict in 1.7/1.8 until the nicer API arrives. See ​PasswordChangeForm for an example in Django itself.

[pascal chambon]

Doc update to workaround the disappearance of SortedDict

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In c5c87511:

Refs #24487 -- Added upgrade tips about removal of SortedDict.

Thanks Pascal Chambon for the initial patch.

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In ddb95d6d:

[1.8.x] Refs #24487 -- Added upgrade tips about removal of SortedDict.

Thanks Pascal Chambon for the initial patch.

Backport of c5c8751147d41913a05e86097ea29ccc9fc2e5be from master

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In 11892713:

[1.7.x] Refs #24487 -- Added upgrade tips about removal of SortedDict.

Thanks Pascal Chambon for the initial patch.

Backport of c5c8751147d41913a05e86097ea29ccc9fc2e5be from master

[pascal chambon]

Thanks