DateField

This class handles date input validation and conversion, ensuring that provided values are transformed into Python datetime.date objects. It supports multiple input formats and provides default error messaging for invalid entries. The field integrates with a specific date input widget and inherits temporal processing capabilities from a base class.

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Description
widget	[Widget](../widgets/widget.md?sid=django_forms_widgets_widget) = DateInput	The form widget class used to render this field in HTML, defaulting to DateInput.
input_formats	list = formats.get_format_lazy("DATE_INPUT_FORMATS")	A list of formats used to attempt to parse a string into a valid Python datetime.date object.
default_error_messages	dict = {"invalid": _("Enter a valid date.")}	A dictionary of error message keys and their corresponding localized text used when validation fails.

---

Methods

---

to_python()

@classmethod
def to_python(
    value: any
) - > datetime.date

Validate that the input can be converted to a date. Return a Python datetime.date object.

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
value	any	The raw input value to be converted, which can be a string, date, or datetime object.

Returns

Type	Description
datetime.date	A Python date object representing the input value, or None if the value is empty.

---

strptime()

@classmethod
def strptime(
    value: string,
    format: string
) - > datetime.date

Parses a string into a date object using a specific format string.

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
value	string	The string representation of a date to be parsed.
format	string	The strptime-style format string used to interpret the date components.

Returns

Type	Description
datetime.date	A date object extracted from the formatted string.

---