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Hi, I'm Daniel Greenfeld, and welcome to my blog. I write about Python, Django, and much more.

Simple Django email form using CBV

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 (permalink)

Here's a simple FormView Class Based Views for Django. Here is a sample of how to do one as a simple email form. There is no CAPTCHA in this example, that's the topic of a future blog post.

This version requires the following packages pip installed into your virtualenv.

  • django-crispy-forms so we can do Python driven layouts.
  • django-floppyforms so we get HTML5 elements for free.

They also need to be added to your list of INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS += (
    'crispy_forms',
    'floppyforms',
)

In myapp.forms.py:

from crispy_forms.helper import FormHelper
from crispy_forms.layout import Submit
import floppyforms as forms

class ContactForm(forms.Form):

    name = forms.CharField(required=True)
    email = forms.EmailField(required=True)
    subject = forms.CharField(required=True)
    message = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.helper = FormHelper()
        self.helper.add_input(Submit('submit', 'Submit'))
        super(ContactForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

In myapp.views.py:

from django.conf import settings
from django.core.mail import send_mail
from django.views.generic import FormView

from myapp.forms import ContactForm

class ContactFormView(FormView):

    form_class = ContactForm
    template_name = "myapp/email_form.html"
    success_url = '/email-sent/'

    def form_valid(self, form):
        message = "{name} / {email} said: ".format(
            name=form.cleaned_data.get('name'),
            email=form.cleaned_data.get('email'))
        message += "\n\n{0}".format(form.cleaned_data.get('message'))
        send_mail(
            subject=form.cleaned_data.get('subject').strip(),
            message=message,
            from_email='contact-form@myapp.com',
            recipient_list=[settings.LIST_OF_EMAIL_RECIPIENTS],
        )
        return super(ContactFormView, self).form_valid(form)

In templates/myapp/email_form.html:

{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% load crispy_forms_tags %}

{% block title %}Send an email{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
    <div class="row">
        <div class="span6">
            <h1>Send an email</h1>
            {% crispy form form.helper %}
        </div>
    </div>
{% endblock %}

{% block extrajs %}
<script src="{{ STATIC_URL }}js/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
    $('#id_name').focus()
});
</script>
{% endblock %}

Tomorrow's blog post

In tomorrow's post I'll show how to add CAPTCHA into your project to help reduce spam messages.

Want to learn more?

If you live in the Los Angeles area and want to learn more about Django, everything from the basics to setting up a Content Management System or E-Commerce system, check out our Django (and Python) training at Cartwheel Academy.

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