How to change empty_label for modelForm choice field?

Question

I have a field in one of my models like the following:

PAYROLL_CHOICES = (
    ('C1', 'Choice1'),
    ('C2', 'Choice2')
    etc.....
)

payrollProvider = models.CharField(max_length=2, choices=PAYROLL_CHOICES)

When I create a model form for this field, Django correctly generates an HTML select box, but includes a default blank value of "---------".

I would like to know how to change this default value to some other text, such as "please choose value".

I believe I should be able to set this in my model form's init via the following, as documented in this answer and several others:

self.fields['payrollProvider'].empty_label = "please choose value"

However, this isn't working for me. When I include that line in my form's init, "--------" still shows up as the initial choice in the select box. I'm pasting the relevant forms.py below, but it seems that others have also been unable to access / modify empty_label. At this link, the questioner describes a way to delete the default empty_label value (which I was able to do successfully via his method) but what I really want to do is to modify the empty_label that is displayed.

Any ideas?

Here's the code for the form in forms.py, with the empty_label code that isn't successful at changing the default "----------":

class PayrollCredentialForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PayrollCredentialForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['payrollUsername'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
        self.fields['payrollPassword'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
        self.fields['payrollProvider'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
        self.fields['payrollUsername'].widget.attrs.update({'placeholder' : '  Payroll Username'})
        self.fields['payrollPassword'].widget.attrs.update({'placeholder' : '  Payroll Password'})
        self.fields['payrollProvider'].empty_label = "please choose value"


class Meta:
    model = Company
    fields = ('payrollProvider', 'payrollUsername', 'payrollPassword')
    widgets = {
        'payrollPassword': forms.PasswordInput(),
    }

Incontinent

Answer 1

The problem is that you are trying to specify something that is not available for the type of Select field.

The empty_label option is for forms.ModelChoiceField, which happens to use a Select widget, but is not the same kind of field as your CharField that you are providing options for.

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/forms/fields/#modelchoicefield

You can see this also in a previous question here: https://mcmap.net/q/240091/-customize-remove-django-select-box-blank-option

You could try and override the html of the modelform to add the first option as "please choose value". Alternatively, you could use a template filter to do the same thing. Lastly, you could and ("", "please choose value") to PAYROLL_CHOICES, and if you don't want it to be submitted without a payrollProvider just set blank=False for the field in the model.

JD

Warrantable

Answer 2

dokkaebi, that won't work properly. You'll receive the following select code:

<select name="payrollProvider" id="id_payrollProvider">
<option value="" selected="selected">---------</option>
<option value="" selected="selected">please choose value</option>
<option value="C1">Choice1</option>
<option value="C2">Choice2</option>
</select>

The only relatively convenient way that came to my mind is to do something like this in the form:

class PayrollCredentialForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Company
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PayrollCredentialForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields["payrollProvider"].choices = [("", "please choose value"),] + list(self.fields["payrollProvider"].choices)[1:] 

Pinette

A lifesaver after 3 hours of banging my head against a wall. Changing the blank label looks to be possible in 1.7. – Clipboard

Answer 3

Actually, now (as of Django 1.8 and higher) override of an empty_label works:

class PayrollCredentialForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PayrollCredentialForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['payrollProvider'].empty_label = 'Please, choose value'

Also, if you working with Django Admin, there is an option to set empty value for a list view:

class PayrollCredentialAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('payrollProvider_value', )

    def payrollProvider_value(self, instance):
        return instance.payrollProvider
    payrollProvider_value.empty_value_display = 'Empty value'

---

What if field should be readonly?

There is a catch if field modified in such way should be readonly.

If overridden form field will be specified in readonly_fields attribute inside PayrollCredentialAdmin class, it would result in KeyError exception in PayrollCredentialForm (because readonly field won't be included in form's self.fields). To handle that, it's required to override formfield_for_dbfield instead of using readonly_fields:

def formfield_for_dbfield(self, db_field, **kwargs):
    field = super(PayrollCredentialAdmin, self).formfield_for_dbfield(
        db_field, **kwargs
    )
    db_fieldname = canonical_fieldname(db_field)

    if db_fieldname == 'payrollProvider':
        field.widget = forms.Select(attrs={
            'readonly': True, 'disabled': 'disabled',
        })

    return field

Might be useful.

---

Update for Django 1.11:

Comments below brought assumption that such override is no longer valid for newer version of Django.

Privilege

Strange, it worked for me on Django 1.9 (not tested specifically 1.9.7 though). Upvotes confirmed that this is a working solution. Maybe you've made a mistake somewhere in the code? – Privilege

Can you Post the whole Form (including the field you used) for comparsion? I solved it over adding an empty choice buts it kind of annoying since ModelChoice has that option (and it works) – Teplitz

confirmed this doesn't work for me either (in django 1.11) I had to use pythonpro's answer instead. – Suzan

Answer 4

In your forms.py file, This would definitely work.. Try this...

     class Meta:
        model = StaffDetails
        fields =['photo','email', 'first_name','school','department', 'middle_name','last_name','gender', 'is_active']
     def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(StaffDetailsForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['Field_name'].empty_label = 'Please Select' 

It worked for me.. just replace the field names with yours...

Froghopper

Answer 5

Only ModelChoiceField (generated for ForeignKey fields) supports the empty_label parameter, and in that case it's tricky to get at as those fields are usually generated by django.forms.models.ModelFormMetaclass within a call to django.forms.models.modelform_factory.

ModelFormMetaclass uses the empty_label param to add another choice to the list, with empty_label as the display and '' as its value.

The simplest way to do what you want is just to add an empty choice to your choices list:

PAYROLL_CHOICES = (
        ('', 'please choose value'),
        ('C1', 'Choice1'),
        ('C2', 'Choice2'),

        etc.....
                    )

Innings

Answer 6

Another simple way worked for me is:

country = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=Country.objects.filter(), empty_label='--Select--')

However, my Django version is 2.2.7

Degenerate

Answer 7

Just add a tuple to your model.field.choices with a value of None:

 payrollProvider = models.CharField(max_length=2, choices=PAYROLL_CHOICES)
 PAYROLL_CHOICES = (
        (None, 'please choose'),
        ('C1', 'Choice1'),
        ('C2', 'Choice2')
        etc.....
                    )

From the docs (v4.0):

Unless blank=False is set on the field along with a default then a label containing "---------" will be rendered with the select box. To override this behavior, add a tuple to choices containing None; e.g. (None, 'Your String For Display'). Alternatively, you can use an empty string instead of None where this makes sense - such as on a CharField.

Whelk

Answer 8

Adapted from Javed answer. Since I have tons of fields in my form I just want to replace all labels in the html by placeholders so for select tags I use their field label.

class PacienteForm(forms.ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        model=Paciente
        fields=('__all__')

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PacienteForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        for f in self.fields:
            if hasattr(self.fields[f], 'choices'):
                choices=self.fields[f].choices
                if type(choices) == list:
                    choices[0]=('',self.fields[f].label)
                    self.fields[f].choices=choices

Ora

Answer 9

Add Empty String with "Please Select" to choices as shown below:

class DateForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        class Months(models.TextChoices):
            EMPTY_LABEL = '', 'Please Select' # Here
            JANUARY = 'JAN', 'January'
            FEBRUARY = 'FEB', 'February'
            MARCH = 'MAR', 'March'
                                 
        self.fields['month'].choices = Months.choices

Socialize