Django - When to use Forms and Best Practices

Please share your thoughts abouts the following

1. When to use D开发者_如何转开发jango Forms to produce the HTML fields
2. When to avoid it and use the plain HTML
3. Any other tips and best practices

I use django forms or maybe another forms helper if I need something specific in every case, no matter what. I never compose forms using plain-old html.

Many aspects of form processing are not related to presentation. What kind of information needs to be collected and how to validate that certainly falls outside of the domain of presentation. Using a forms helper can help to unify all of this work in a pretty convenient way.

The fact that a forms helper can also render html is sort of coincidental to it's use. Certainly, if that's all they did, they wouldn't be worth much, but since they do all of that and stay in sync with the needs of the business logic, it somewhat requires using the html rendering from the form helper to reap the maximum benefit from the assistance it offers the rest of the app.

When to use Django Forms to produce the HTML fields
Django forms provide HTML forms for models, user-built as well as combination of both. One should be using Django forms most of the times since it considerably reduces the redundant templating effort. The tightly controlled security provided by Django forms along with the strong validation support is worth the effort to use Django forms.

When to avoid it and use the plain HTML
A good use-case to avoid Django forms is when you need to fire javascript events or there is a lot of style deviation from your main stylesheet.

Any other tips and best practices
Derive maximum advantages of the framework by using maximum features of the framework as possible.