Certain django-select2 fields won't render when multiple forms are used on single template
I have an issue rendering some select2 fields:
When multiple forms with same select2 widget are used within a single template some select2 fields are not rendered as expected (rendered just as normal select field).
If I re-initialize one of the fields using JQuery it renders as expected ($("element").djangoSelect2()
).
CSS/JS (the one rendered with {{ form.media }}
property) renders as well and can be seen in browser's dev mode.
What might be the issue rendering django-select2
fields and do I have to render media
imports for each form or just one of them is enough as they looks identical?
Simplified forms example:
FORM 1:
<form action="">
<div class="form-meta">
{{ form.media }}
</div>
<div class="field p-2 d-flex flex-column flex-fill rounded">
{{ form.recipient.label_tag }}
{{ form.recipient }}
{% if form.recipient.errors %}
<div class="error">{{ form.recipient.errors }}</div>
{% endif %}
</div>
</form>
FORM 2
<form action="">
<div class="d-flex flex-column gap-2">
<!-- Recipient field -->
<div class="form-meta">
{{ shipment_form.media }}
</div>
<div class="d-flex gap-2 p-3 border">
<i class="align-self-center fa-regular fa-user fa-2x"></i>
<div class="vr"></div>
<div class="d-flex gap-2 flex-fill">
<div id="recipientFieldContainer" class="flex-fill">
{{ shipment_form.recipient }}
</div>
<button class="btn btn-dark rounded-0" type="button" data-bs-target="#newRecipientModal" data-bs-toggle="modal">+</button>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Comment field -->
{{ shipment_form.comment }}
</div>
</form>
The problem is that both forms have a field with the same HTML id
(e.g., id_recipient
).
Django-select2 relies on unique IDs to initialize each widget. When two fields share the same ID, only the first one is enhanced, and the others remain normal <select>
elements.
In your template:
{{ form.recipient }}
{{ shipment_form.recipient }}
Both fields render with the same id
, for example:
<select id="id_recipient" name="id_recipient">...</select>
<select id="id_recipient" name="id_recipient">...</select>
This causes Select2 initialization to break for the second field. That’s why manually re-initializing with jQuery works:
$("#id_recipient").djangoSelect2();
You need to ensure unique IDs for each field. You can do this directly in your forms.py
by overriding the widget and assigning a unique attrs['id']
. A common approach is to use uuid
:
import uuid
from django import forms
from django_select2.forms import Select2Widget
class MyForm(forms.Form):
recipient = forms.ChoiceField(
choices=[('1', 'Alice'), ('2', 'Bob')],
widget=Select2Widget(attrs={'id': f'recipient_{uuid.uuid4()}'})
)
This ensures each select field has a unique HTML ID, e.g.:
<select id="recipient_123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000" ...>
<select id="recipient_987f1234-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174999" ...>
Now django-select2 can initialize both fields correctly without conflicts.