Form and field validation¶

Form validation happens when the data is cleaned. If you want to customize this process, there are various places to make changes, each one serving a different purpose. Three types of cleaning methods are run during form processing. These are normally executed when you call the is_valid() method on a form. There are other things that can also trigger cleaning and validation (accessing the errors attribute or calling full_clean() directly), but normally they won’t be needed.

In general, any cleaning method can raise ValidationError if there is a problem with the data it is processing, passing the relevant information to the ValidationError constructor. See below for the best practice in raising ValidationError. If no ValidationError is raised, the method should return the cleaned (normalized) data as a Python object.

Most validation can be done using validators – helpers that can be reused. Validators are functions (or callables) that take a single argument and raise ValidationError on invalid input. Validators are run after the field’s to_python and validate methods have been called.

Validation of a form is split into several steps, which can be customized or overridden:

• The to_python() method on a Field is the first step in every validation. It coerces the value to a correct datatype and raises ValidationError if that is not possible. This method accepts the raw value from the widget and returns the converted value. For example, a FloatField will turn the data into a Python float or raise a ValidationError.

• The validate() method on a Field handles field-specific validation that is not suitable for a validator. It takes a value that has been coerced to a correct datatype and raises ValidationError on any error. This method does not return anything and shouldn’t alter the value. You should override it to handle validation logic that you can’t or don’t want to put in a validator.

• The run_validators() method on a Field runs all of the field’s validators and aggregates all the errors into a single ValidationError. You shouldn’t need to override this method.

• The clean() method on a Field subclass is responsible for running to_python(), validate(), and run_validators() in the correct order and propagating their errors. If, at any time, any of the methods raise ValidationError, the validation stops and that error is raised. This method returns the clean data, which is then inserted into the cleaned_data dictionary of the form.

• The clean_<fieldname>() method is called on a form subclass – where <fieldname> is replaced with the name of the form field attribute. This method does any cleaning that is specific to that particular attribute, unrelated to the type of field that it is. This method is not passed any parameters. You will need to look up the value of the field in self.cleaned_data and remember that it will be a Python object at this point, not the original string submitted in the form (it will be in cleaned_data because the general field clean() method, above, has already cleaned the data once).

  For example, if you wanted to validate that the contents of a CharField called serialnumber was unique, clean_serialnumber() would be the right place to do this. You don’t need a specific field (it’s a CharField), but you want a formfield-specific piece of validation and, possibly, cleaning/normalizing the data.

  The return value of this method replaces the existing value in cleaned_data, so it must be the field’s value from cleaned_data (even if this method didn’t change it) or a new cleaned value.

• The form subclass’s clean() method can perform validation that requires access to multiple form fields. This is where you might put in checks such as «if field A is supplied, field B must contain a valid email address». This method can return a completely different dictionary if it wishes, which will be used as the cleaned_data.

  Since the field validation methods have been run by the time clean() is called, you also have access to the form’s errors attribute which contains all the errors raised by cleaning of individual fields.

  Note that any errors raised by your Form.clean() override will not be associated with any field in particular. They go into a special «field» (called __all__), which you can access via the non_field_errors() method if you need to. If you want to attach errors to a specific field in the form, you need to call add_error().

  Also note that there are special considerations when overriding the clean() method of a ModelForm subclass. (see the ModelForm documentation for more information)

These methods are run in the order given above, one field at a time. That is, for each field in the form (in the order they are declared in the form definition), the Field.clean() method (or its override) is run, then clean_<fieldname>(). Finally, once those two methods are run for every field, the Form.clean() method, or its override, is executed whether or not the previous methods have raised errors.

Examples of each of these methods are provided below.

As mentioned, any of these methods can raise a ValidationError. For any field, if the Field.clean() method raises a ValidationError, any field-specific cleaning method is not called. However, the cleaning methods for all remaining fields are still executed.

raise ValidationError(
    _("Invalid value: %(value)s"),
    code="invalid",
    params={"value": "42"},
)

ValidationError(_("Invalid value: %s") % value)

# Good
raise ValidationError(
    [
        ValidationError(_("Error 1"), code="error1"),
        ValidationError(_("Error 2"), code="error2"),
    ]
)

# Bad
raise ValidationError(
    [
        _("Error 1"),
        _("Error 2"),
    ]
)

from django.core import validators
from django.forms import CharField


class SlugField(CharField):
    default_validators = [validators.validate_slug]

slug = forms.SlugField()

slug = forms.CharField(validators=[validators.validate_slug])

from django import forms
from django.core.validators import validate_email


class MultiEmailField(forms.Field):
    def to_python(self, value):
        """Normalize data to a list of strings."""
        # Return an empty list if no input was given.
        if not value:
            return []
        return value.split(",")

    def validate(self, value):
        """Check if value consists only of valid emails."""
        # Use the parent's handling of required fields, etc.
        super().validate(value)
        for email in value:
            validate_email(email)

class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    subject = forms.CharField(max_length=100)
    message = forms.CharField()
    sender = forms.EmailField()
    recipients = MultiEmailField()
    cc_myself = forms.BooleanField(required=False)

from django import forms
from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError


class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    # Everything as before.
    ...

    def clean_recipients(self):
        data = self.cleaned_data["recipients"]
        if "fred@example.com" not in data:
            raise ValidationError("You have forgotten about Fred!")

        # Always return a value to use as the new cleaned data, even if
        # this method didn't change it.
        return data

from django import forms
from django.core.exceptions import ValidationError


class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    # Everything as before.
    ...

    def clean(self):
        cleaned_data = super().clean()
        cc_myself = cleaned_data.get("cc_myself")
        subject = cleaned_data.get("subject")

        if cc_myself and subject:
            # Only do something if both fields are valid so far.
            if "help" not in subject:
                raise ValidationError(
                    "Did not send for 'help' in the subject despite CC'ing yourself."
                )

def clean(self):
    super().clean()
    cc_myself = self.cleaned_data.get("cc_myself")
    ...

from django import forms


class ContactForm(forms.Form):
    # Everything as before.
    ...

    def clean(self):
        cleaned_data = super().clean()
        cc_myself = cleaned_data.get("cc_myself")
        subject = cleaned_data.get("subject")

        if cc_myself and subject and "help" not in subject:
            msg = "Must put 'help' in subject when cc'ing yourself."
            self.add_error("cc_myself", msg)
            self.add_error("subject", msg)