I had to write a multi-object edit table the other day for a Django project and as such I dove into the FormSet Documentation. Django’s documentation is really good usually but the part abut the FormSets was a bit of a letdown.

So in case anybody else is in the same situation here is some code of how I did it (written from memory - should still be okay I hope).

# forms.py
from django import forms from django.forms.models import modelformset_factory # creating a FormSet for a specific Model is easy FooFormSetBase = modelformset_factory( Foo, extra=0, fields=('somefield', 'someotherfield')) # now we want to add a checkbox so we can do stuff to only selected items class FooFormSet(FooFormSetBase): # this is where you can add additional fields to a ModelFormSet # this is also where you can change stuff about the auto generated form def add_fields(self, form, index): super(FooFormSet, self).add_fields(form, index) form.fields['is_checked'] = forms.BooleanField(required=False) form.fields['somefield'].widget.attrs['class'] = 'somefieldclass' 
 

After writing the FormSet itself here is the view:

# views.py
from django.shortcuts import redirect from django.template import RequestContext from fooproject.fooapp.forms import FooFormSet from fooproject.models import Foo def fooview(request): if request.method == 'POST': # we have multiple actions - save and delete in this case action = request.POST.get('action') formset = FooFormSet( request.POST, queryset=Foo.objects.all()) if formset.is_valid(): # iterate over all forms in the formset for form in formset.forms: # only do stuff for forms in which is_checked is checked if form.cleaned_data.get('is_checked'): if action == u'delete': # we need to call save to get an actual model but # there is no need to hit the database hence the # commit=False model_instance = form.save(commit=False) # now that we got a model we can delete it model_instance.delete() if action == u'save': form.save() redirect('someview') else: formset = FooFormSet(queryset=Foo.objects.all()) return render_to_response('sometemplate.html', {'formset': formset}, context_instance=RequestContext(request)) 
 

Now all that’s missing is the template:

<form action="." method="post" accept-charset="utf-8"> <table> <thead> <tr> <th>is_checked</th> <th>somefield</th> <th>someotherfield</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> {% for form in formset.forms %} <tr> <td> {# don't forget about the id field #} {{ form.id }} {{ form.is_checked }} </td> <td>{{ form.somefield }}</td> <td>{{ form.someotherfield }}</td> </tr> {% endfor %} </tbody> </table> <p> {# and don't forget about the management form #} {{ formset.management_form }} {% csrf_token %} <button type="submit" name="action" value="save">save</button> <button type="submit" name="action" value="delete">delete</button> </p> </form> 

Of course there is stuff still missing – you won’t see errors in your form for example. But you get the general idea.