Single form field for multiple database fields

[Adrian Holovaty]

Some admin interfaces would benefit from being able to have multiple fields' worth of data entered in a single field. For example, a field for a sports stat could be entered into a single field as "XX-YY-ZZ", whereas the three values are actually three separate fields in the DB.

Relevant conversation:

<jacobkm> Well, I'm using those aggregate fields for stats where you type something like "3-17" and it gets split into multiple fields.  I see there's a CommaSeperatedIntegerField in formfields which would work for this, but there needs to be a way in the datadescriptions to say "this group of fields should be presented as a single field"
<django34> The DD will have to provide a format string of some sort
<jacobkm> Easy enough
<jacobkm> are you thinking of a % format string or a regex?
<django34> Not sure...
<django34> Probably just %
<django34> fields_together = '%(last_name)s, %(first_name)s'

[Gary Wilson <gary.wilson@…>]

I know there have been some newforms examples where multiple form fields are used for a single database field. Is it just as easy to do the opposite, single form field for multiple database fields?

[Simon Willison]

This would be useful for tagging interfaces as well, where you often want to enter multiple tags separated by spaces.

[mir@…]

The stage was 'Unreviewed', but from the history it should be 'Accepted'. Probably a spam-removal-relict ... I haven't looked at the details.

[Collin Anderson]

Seems to me this is a newforms limitation.

[mrts]

Non-essential for 1.0.

[(none)]

Milestone post-1.0 deleted

[anonymous]

I would not tie this kind of information to the Model. What would you say about the following syntax?

class PersonForm(forms.ModelForm):
    full_name = forms.CharField()

    class Meta:
        exclude = ('first_name', 'last_name',)
        aggregation = {
            'full_name': '%(last_name)s, %(first_name)s',
        }

There would be no 'full_name' key in PersonForm.cleaned_data, but 'first_name' and 'last_name'. Validation errors (like incompatibility with format string) would be raised for the full_name field.

[msiedlarek]

Forgot to login. comment:12 is mine.

[Aymeric Augustin]

Change UI/UX from NULL to False.

[Aymeric Augustin]

Change Easy pickings from NULL to False.

[loic84]

I think this can be trivially implemented with a custom field and with the current public APIs.

Any objection to closing this ticket?