How to take value from Django form?

Question

I have a form with one field for choosing a method to sort objects. However, when I refer to this field to get it's value, it equals to HTML code that renders out this form. How do I solve this problem?

My form:

class sortChoice(forms.Form):
    CHOICES = [('sbd', 'Сортировать по дате'),
                ('sbp', 'Сортировать по популярности')]
    choice = forms.ChoiceField(choices = CHOICES, widget = forms.RadioSelect, label = 'Сортировка по')

My view:

@login_required(login_url = 'login')

def vacancyListView(request):
    searchQueryNavbar = request.GET.get('search_navbar', '')
    searchQueryVLpage = request.GET.get('search_vlpage', '')
    form = sortChoice()
    print(form['choice'])
    if searchQueryNavbar or searchQueryVLpage:
        if searchQueryNavbar:
            searchQuery = searchQueryNavbar
        else:
            searchQuery = searchQueryVLpage
        if form['choice'] == 'sbp':
            queryset = Vacancy.objects.filter(Q(name__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(salary__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(competences__icontains = searchQuery)).order_by('-viewsAmount')
        if form['choice'] == 'sbd':
            queryset = Vacancy.objects.filter(Q(name__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(salary__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(competences__icontains = searchQuery)).order_by('-creationDate')
    else:
        queryset = Vacancy.objects.all().order_by('-viewsAmount')
    context = {
        'objectList':queryset,
        'form':form
    }
    return render(request, "vacancyList.html", context)

Console output of print(from['choice']) :

<ul id="id_choice">

    <li><label for="id_choice_0"><input type="radio" name="choice" value="sbd" required id="id_choice_0">
 Сортировать по дате</label>
</li>
    <li><label for="id_choice_1"><input type="radio" name="choice" value="sbp" required id="id_choice_1">
 Сортировать по популярности</label>
</li>
</ul>

Answer 1

You have to assign data to your form. See Bound and unbound forms

form = sortChoice(request.POST or request.GET)

After call form.is_valid() , you will be able to access cleaned_data .

And then your code is something like this:

@login_required(login_url = 'login')
def vacancyListView(request):
    searchQueryNavbar = request.GET.get('search_navbar', '')
    searchQueryVLpage = request.GET.get('search_vlpage', '')
    form = sortChoice(request.POST or request.GET)
    if searchQueryNavbar or searchQueryVLpage:
        if searchQueryNavbar:
            searchQuery = searchQueryNavbar
        else:
            searchQuery = searchQueryVLpage
        if form.is_valid():
            selected = form.cleaned_data.get("choice")
            if selected == 'sbp':
                queryset = Vacancy.objects.filter(Q(name__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(salary__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(competences__icontains = searchQuery)).order_by('-viewsAmount')
            if selected == 'sbd':
                queryset = Vacancy.objects.filter(Q(name__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(salary__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(competences__icontains = searchQuery)).order_by('-creationDate')
    else:
        queryset = Vacancy.objects.all().order_by('-viewsAmount')
    context = {
        'objectList':queryset,
        'form':form
    }
    return render(request, "vacancyList.html", context)

I would change the choice keys as following :

CHOICES = [
    ('creationDate', 'Сортировать по дате'),
    ('viewsAmount', 'Сортировать по популярности')
]

then you don't have to use if else and do like this:

queryset = Vacancy.objects.filter(
    Q(name__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(salary__icontains = searchQuery) | Q(competences__icontains = searchQuery)
).order_by('-%s' % form.cleaned_data.get("choice"))