Forms in HQ

See the HQ Style Guide for guidance on form UI, whether you’re creating a custom HTML form or using crispy forms.

Making forms CSRF safe

HQ is protected against cross site request forgery attacks i.e. if a POST/PUT/DELETE request doesn’t pass csrf token to corresponding View, the View will reject those requests with a 403 response. All HTML forms and AJAX calls that make such requests should contain a csrf token to succeed. Making a form or AJAX code pass csrf token is easy and the Django docs give detailed instructions on how to do so. Here we list out examples of HQ code that does that

  1. If crispy form is used to render HTML form, csrf token is included automagically

  2. For raw HTML form, use {% csrf_token %} tag in the form HTML, see tag_csrf_example.

  3. If request is made via AJAX, it will be automagically protected by ajax_csrf_setup.js (which is included in base bootstrap template) as long as your template is inherited from the base template. (ajax_csrf_setup.js overrides $.ajaxSettings.beforeSend to accomplish this)

  4. If an AJAX call needs to override beforeSend itself, then the super $.ajaxSettings.beforeSend should be explicitly called to pass csrf token. See ajax_csrf_example

  5. If HTML form is created in Javascript using raw nodes, csrf-token node should be added to that form. See js_csrf_example_1 and js_csrf_example_2

  6. If an inline form is generated using outside of RequestContext using render_to_string or its cousins, use csrf_inline custom tag. See inline_csrf_example

  7. If a View needs to be exempted from csrf check (for whatever reason, say for API), use csrf_exampt decorator to avoid csrf check. See csrf_exempt_example

  8. For any other special unusual case refer to Django docs. Essentially, either the HTTP request needs to have a csrf-token or the corresponding View should be exempted from CSRF check.