How can I assign the logged in (authenticated) user to the form data they submit?

Question

I am developing an employee feedback interface with Django. They shall be able to log in and submit a complaint. That complaint is supposed to be stored in the database with the user who submitted it as an attribute.

I have tried to somehow pass the user to the form so that the form saves the authenticated user's username, but I haven't been able to pass data from a view to a form. I have been able to integrate a ModelChoiceField() to the ModelForm, but that lets the authenticated user manipulate the username that the complaint is going to be associated with.

models.py:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import User


class Complaint(models.Model):
    complaint_text = models.CharField(max_length=1000, default='')
    switch_schedule_yes_or_no = models.BooleanField(default=True)
    user = models.ForeignKey(User, default=1, on_delete=models.CASCADE)

views.py:

from .forms import ComplaintForm
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from django.shortcuts import render


@login_required()
def complaint_view(request):
    form = ComplaintForm(request.POST)
    if form.is_valid():
        form.save()
        form = ComplaintForm()

    context = {
        'form': form,
    }
    return render(request, 'complaint.html', context)

forms.py:

from django import forms
from .models import Complaint
from django.contrib.auth.models import User


class ComplaintForm(forms.ModelForm):
    complaint_text = forms.CharField(max_length=1000)
    switch_schedule_yes_or_no = forms.BooleanField()
    user = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=User.objects.all())

    class Meta:
        model = Complaint
        fields = ['complaint_text', 'switch_schedule_yes_or_no', 'user']

If it is possible to somehow design this is a way that allows the complaint to be associated with the authenticated user, that would be amazing! Be it by passing parameters from a view to a form or by using user-individual URLS. I have been trying to solve this for days now.

Cheers!

Answer 1

You can use request.user to access the authenticated user and associate with you Complaint object. You don't need the user field in the ComplaintForm form.

@login_required()
def complaint_view(request):
    form = ComplaintForm(request.POST)
    if form.is_valid():
        complaint = form.save(commit=False)  #don't commit to DB
        complaint.user = request.user  #access the user
        complaint.save()   # save and commit to DB
        form = ComplaintForm()

    context = {
        'form': form,
    }
    return render(request, 'complaint.html', context)

Answer 2

Try the following Class Based View Approach

In your form, you can ommit this line:

user = forms.ModelChoiceField(queryset=User.objects.all())

from django.views import generic

from my_app.forms import ComplaintForm

class ComplaintView(generic.CreateView):
    template_name = "complaint.html"
    form_class = ComplaintForm

    def form_valid(self, form):
        form.instance.user = self.request.user  # This is where what you want happens
        super().form_valid(form)

And to add the login required constraint, you can use the LoginRequiredMixin :

from django.contrib.auth.mixins import LoginRequiredMixin

class ComplaintView(LoginRequiredMixin, generic.CreateView):
    pass