SQLFORM.factory is an abstraction layer on top of SQLFORM in order to take advantage of the form generation features even if there is no database present
SQLFORM.factory is an abstraction layer on top of SQLFORM in order to take advantage of the form generation features even if there is no database present. It generates a form very similar to SQLFORM from the description of a table but without the need to create the database table.
There are cases when you want to generate forms as if you had a database table but you do not want the database table. You simply want to take advantage of the SQLFORM capability to generate a nice looking CSS-friendly form and perhaps perform file upload and renaming.
You need to use an underscore instead of a space for field labels, or explicitly pass a dictionary of labels to form_factory, as you would for a SQLFORM. By default SQLFORM.factory generates the form using html "id" attributes generated as if the form was generated from a table called "no_table". To change this dummy table name, use the table_name attribute for the factory.
form = SQLFORM.factory(...,table_name='other_dummy_name')
#Changing the table_name is necessary if you need to place two factory
# generated forms in the same table and want to avoid CSS conflicts.
# Here is an example where you generate the form, perform validation,
# upload a file and store everything in the session :
def form_from_factory():
form = SQLFORM.factory(
Field('your_name', requires=IS_NOT_EMPTY()),
Field('your_image', 'upload'))
if form.process().accepted:
response.flash = 'form accepted'
session.your_name = form.vars.your_name
session.your_image = form.vars.your_image
elif form.errors:
response.flash = 'form has errors'
return dict(form=form)
