Add a custom user-facing form to Django app (uses selectize and taggit) - ajax

Question

I'm fairly new to django, and I'm trying to figure out how to create a form using the taggit-selectize widget (or django-taggit). Everything I've found online refers to its use the admin page, but I want the tags to be user-facing and editable - much like the tags I create below this post. So far, I've determined that I need to create a form using a widget:
# models.py
from taggit_selectize.managers import TaggableManager
tags = TaggableManager()
# forms.py
from taggit_selectize.widgets import TagSelectize
from .models import MyModel
class TagForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = MyModel
fields = ('tags',)
widgets = {'tags': TagSelectize(),}
but I can't figure out how to include this form in my template so that it appears beside my MyModel objects. Ideally, I guess I'd was expecting it to behave like django-fluent-comments, where I can just call {% render_comment_form for obj %} and call it a day.
Update
I've edited views (see below) and can now access the form in the template, but I can't seem to submit my tags (ideally this wouldn't trigger a redirect, either).
# views.py
from .forms import TagForm
def show_tags(request):
return render(request, 'tags.html', {'tagform' : TagForm})
# tags.html
<div>
{{ tagform.media }}
{{ tagform.as_p }}
</div>

Answer 1

So, I finally figured this out. It involves wrapping the tagform in <form> tags and catching the POST request. For the record, this is part of a project that involves using Haystack to return a list of results that I then want to tag. My views.py subclasses a SearchView rather than defining a function as I do here (show_tags()), and rather than one object per page I have multiple.
For an object obj on the page, you have the following
# views.py
from .forms import TagForm
from .models import MyModel
from django.views.decorators.http import require_POST
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt
def show_tags(request):
# Perhaps the request specifies the object, but
# for simplicity's sake we just pick a specific model instance
object = MyModel.objects.filter(pk = 123)
return render(request, 'tags.html', {'tagform' : TagForm,
'obj' : MyModel})
#require_POST
#csrf_exempt
def create_tag(request):
# See javascript below for creation of POST request
data = request.POST
tag_text_raw = data.get('tag_data')
# clean_tag() not shown, but it splits the serialized
# tag_text_raw and returns a list of strings
tag_text_clean = clean_tag(tag_text_raw)
obj_pk = data.get('obj_pk')
#save tags to document
doc = DocInfo.objects.get(pk = obj_pk)
doc.tags.add(*tag_text_clean)
# not strictly necessary; mainly for logging
response_data = {'tag_text': tag_text_clean,
'obj_pk': obj_pk
}
return JsonResponse(response_data)
So show_tags sends the information to the template with render, then the template has access to those objects. This is what didn't make sense to me initially.
# tags.html (extends base.html)
{% block scripts %}{{ block.super }}
<script type="text/javascript" src="{{ STATIC_URL }}js/ajaxtag.js"></script>
{{ tagform.media }}
{% endblock %}
{{ obj.text }}
<form method="post" action="create_tag/" id="tag-form-{{ obj.pk }}" name="tag-form-obj" data-object-id={{ obj.pk }}>
{{ tagform.as_p }}
<input type="submit" name ="tag-form-input" value="Add Tags" />
</form>
We can catch the POST request with javascript:
#ajaxtag.js
(function($)
{
// A stripped-down version of ajaxcomments.js from fluent_comments
// See that file for further expansions
$.fn.ready(function () {
var tagform = $('form[name="tag-form-obj"]');
if (tagform.length > 0) {
// Detect last active input.
// Submit if return is hit
tagform.find(':input').focus(setActiveInput).mousedown(setActiveInput);
tagform.submit(onTagFormSubmit);
}
});
function onTagFormSubmit(event)
{
event.preventDefault(); // prevents redirect
var form = event.target;
create_tag(form);
return false;
}
function create_tag(form)
{
console.log("create_tag is working!") // sanity check
var $form = $(form);
var tag_text = $form.serialize();
var url = $form.attr('action');
var obj_id = $form.attr('data-object-id')
$.ajax({
url : url,
type: "POST",
data: { tag_data: tag_text, obj_pk: obj_id},
success: function (data) {
data;
console.log(data);
console.log('success');
},
error: function (xhr, errmsg, err) {
// Return error to console
console.log(xhr.status + ": " + xhr.responseText)
}
});
}
function setActiveInput() {
active_input = this.name;
}
})(window.jQuery);
Finally, urls.py sends the request back to create_tag()
# urls.py
from .views import create_tag
...
url(r'^create_tag', create_tag, name = 'tag-form')
...