Opened 17 years ago

Closed 16 years ago

Last modified 15 years ago

#3457 closed (fixed)

Allow overriding of error message for each newforms Field type

Reported by: anonymous Owned by: nobody
Component: Forms Version: dev
Severity: Keywords:
Cc: egmanoj@…, jm.bugtracking@…, densetsu.no.ero.sennin@…, leo.soto@… Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: yes Needs documentation: no
Needs tests: no Patch needs improvement: yes
Easy pickings: no UI/UX: no

Description

Right now, the only field type that allows custom error messages is RegexField. For those of us that cannot display errors next to their respective field (for whatever reason), having 6 "This field is required." messages in a row just confuses users.

I propose adding error_text to the base Field definition. Adding a simple

self.error_text = error_text or u'This field is required.'

The only design decision I see that needs to be made is how to handle fields that have multiple error messages, e.g., the min/max errors on IntegerField. Perhaps arguments would work there, too: max_error_text, min_error_text.

Attachments (5)

newforms_error_messages.patch (22.8 KB ) - added by Chris Beaven 17 years ago.
newforms_error_messages.2.patch (22.8 KB ) - added by Chris Beaven 17 years ago.
fixed EmailField behaviour and made sure current tests still pass (ErrorList.__repr__ now uses force_unicode)
newforms_error_messages.3.patch (40.6 KB ) - added by Chris Beaven 17 years ago.
with full tests and docs
newforms_error_messages.4.patch (42.7 KB ) - added by Gary Wilson 17 years ago.
newforms_error_messages.5.patch (41.2 KB ) - added by Gary Wilson 17 years ago.
removed my changes from testcases.py I made during testing

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (26)

comment:1 by Adrian Holovaty, 17 years ago

Triage Stage: UnreviewedAccepted

Sure -- good idea. Could you provide a patch, along with unit tests that confirm this behavior for every field?

comment:2 by Adrian Holovaty, 17 years ago

Summary: newforms needs error_text for fieldsAllow overriding of error message for each newforms Field type

comment:3 by Manoj Govindan <egmanoj@…>, 17 years ago

I tried out some code changes (and tests) for implementing a patch. One key question I would like to see answered is how this change should affect the behaviour of RegexField and its subclasses, say URLField. The tests indicate that these classes expect two kind of error messages depending on the nature of the error.

Consider the first kind of error message, raised when the value of the field doesn't fit a given pattern.

>>> f = URLField()
>>> f.clean('foo')
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValidationError: [u'Enter a valid URL.']

The error message displayed is the one used by URLField to override the default provided by RegexField.

Now consider the second scenario where the field is required but turns up empty.

>>> f.clean('')
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValidationError: [u'This field is required.']

The error raised in this case is different (the default error defined in the base 'Field' class is used)

If a URLField object is created with a custom error_message, should it still fall back to the default message if value turns out to be empty? Likewise how should a CharField object with a custom error_message behave in such a case?

One possible solution would be to insist that custom error messages take precedence and hence will be always used if present. I don't mind this but I can see why others could have problems with this. Another approach would be to "collect" errors applicable to each field and display them together (a la Rails model validation).

The latter implementation would result in something similar to this:

>>> f.clean('')
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValidationError: [u'This field is required.', u'Enter a valid URL.']

comment:4 by Manoj Govindan <egmanoj@…>, 17 years ago

Cc: egmanoj@… added

comment:5 by anonymous, 17 years ago

Cc: jm.bugtracking@… added

comment:6 by anonymous, 17 years ago

See also #4063, which proposes a more elegant solution.

comment:7 by Gary Wilson <gary.wilson@…>, 17 years ago

Triage Stage: AcceptedDesign decision needed

#4063 marked as a duplicate.

Need to decide what to do with Fields that can raise more than one Error.

comment:8 by ville.anttonen@…, 17 years ago

I suggest to use dictionary when multiple errors could occur.

by Chris Beaven, 17 years ago

comment:9 by Chris Beaven, 17 years ago

Needs documentation: set
Needs tests: set
Triage Stage: Design decision neededAccepted

Ok, here you go: a working patch. Just needs documentation and tests...

comment:10 by Chris Beaven, 17 years ago

Has patch: set

by Chris Beaven, 17 years ago

fixed EmailField behaviour and made sure current tests still pass (ErrorList.__repr__ now uses force_unicode)

comment:11 by Chris Beaven, 17 years ago

For a quick summary of how it works:

  1. each Field instance gets an error_messages dictionary built from the default_error_messages in it's class (and base classes, recursively)
  1. a user can pass in their own error_messages dictionary which .update()s the error_messages dictionary for that instance
>>> from django.newforms import *
>>> d = DecimalField(error_messages={'invalid':'Mr T says, "Enter a valid number, foo!"'})
>>> d.clean('jibberjabber')

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#72>", line 1, in -toplevel-
    d.clean('jibberjabber')
  File "[...]\django\newforms\fields.py", line 237, in clean
    raise ValidationError(self.error_messages['invalid'])
ValidationError: [u'Mr T says, "Enter a valid number, foo!"']

comment:12 by Densetsu no Ero-sennin <densetsu.no.ero.sennin@…>, 17 years ago

Cc: densetsu.no.ero.sennin@… added

by Chris Beaven, 17 years ago

with full tests and docs

comment:13 by Chris Beaven, 17 years ago

Needs documentation: unset
Needs tests: unset
Triage Stage: AcceptedReady for checkin

In reality, noone else was going to do docs or tests. So here they are.

comment:14 by anonymous, 17 years ago

Cc: leo.soto@… added

comment:15 by Gary Wilson, 17 years ago

Owner: changed from nobody to Gary Wilson
Status: newassigned

comment:16 by Gary Wilson, 17 years ago

Patch needs improvement: set
Triage Stage: Ready for checkinAccepted

brought patch up to date, but tests still failing for python 2.3 due to non-evaluation of lazy objects when printing out ErrorList.

by Gary Wilson, 17 years ago

by Gary Wilson, 17 years ago

removed my changes from testcases.py I made during testing

comment:17 by Gary Wilson, 17 years ago

Owner: changed from Gary Wilson to nobody
Status: assignednew

comment:18 by Niels Sandholt Busch, 16 years ago

Cc: niels.busch@… added

comment:19 by Gary Wilson, 16 years ago

Resolution: fixed
Status: newclosed

(In [6625]) Fixed #3457 -- Allow overridding of error messages for newforms Fields.

comment:20 by Gary Wilson, 16 years ago

Sorry that I forgot to mention it in the commit message, but many thanks to SmileyChris for the bulk of the work done on this patch.

comment:21 by Niels Sandholt Busch, 15 years ago

Cc: niels.busch@… removed
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