Write guidance on best practices for forms

[smcalilly]

Documentation request

We have a lot of CRUD apps that require us to use django forms. They're a bit of a mixed bag. They're a nice way to serialize and validate data, but they can get complicated once your form needs to accept data from model relationships, all within the same web page.

Documentation needs to consider these things (non-exhaustive):

• The form that prompted this issue was a many-to-many model relationship. This is a common pattern that django doesn't support. We need to come up with a good way to do this.
• They're no good for styling. We're always overriding the styles.
• Sometimes we submit forms with JavaScript via an API.

We need some good guidance on the best practices for django forms that answers these questions:

• When do you use a django form and when do you not use a django form?
• What's the best way to style a django form?
• How do we create good forms that work well with complex model relationships?
• When is it a good idea to submit forms via JavaScript?
• And any other questions that come up.

I'm curious to hear everybody's answers to these questions so we can create some best practices that reflects our team's opinions.

[hancush]

PLUS ONE (THOUSAND).

Funny to see what issues linger. :-) Welcome to the legacy, @smcalilly and @xmedr!

[smcalilly]

@smcalilly to narrow the scope to model relationship forms.

Admin dashboard -- inline formsets

what are good patterns within django? using django forms (ignore javascript forms)

what are good patterns for many to many forms?

[smcalilly]

i still haven't figured out how to use django forms the way i want, nor have i found any examples online that address my pain points. i think a more productive focus for me before addressing any sort of documentation is to come up with implementations that i like.