can a script make changes to an object prior to displaying the result in the GUI?

[rcon-git]

Use case: Let's say we want to create a virtual machine. When you create a VM, after clicking the 'create' button, you are taken to the object you just created.

We have a script that runs after objected created or object updated that reformats any charfield or textfield into all lowercase.
"TEST" becomes "test"
"Testing Server" becomes "testing server", etc.

The scripts works exactly how we want, except we notice that after creating/updating an object, the netbox GUI will redirect us to the object we just created/updated and the wrongly formatted text is displayed. Only after refreshing the page do we see the results of the script doing its job and reformatting everything.

The question is, is there a way for the script to be able to run and reformat the text prior to displaying the object in the gui?

The script:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from extras.scripts import Script
from virtualization.models import VirtualMachine

from django.db import models

class lowercasetextfields(Script):
    class Meta:
        name = "lowercase text fields"
        description = "convert all text fields to lowercase"

    def run(self, data, commit):
        updated_recently = datetime.now() - timedelta(seconds=30)
        self.update_items(VirtualMachine.objects.filter(last_updated__gte=updated_recently), "VirtualMachine")

    def update_items(self, items, item_type):
        for item in items:
            changed = False
            updated_fields = []
            for field in item._meta.get_fields():
                if isinstance(field, models.CharField) or isinstance(field, models.TextField):
                    value = getattr(item, field.name)
                    if value and value != value.lower():
                        updated_fields.append((field.name, value, value.lower()))
                        setattr(item, field.name, value.lower())
                        changed = True
            if changed:
                item.save()
                for field_name, old_value, new_value in updated_fields:
                    self.log_info(f"Updated {item_type} '{item.id}' field '{field_name}': '{old_value}' -> '{new_value}'")

[wz4]

I believe the event is triggered after the action, so there's no way around that. A custom plugin could register a pre_save signal to the VirtualMachine model, so it's technically possible, but probably not what you're looking for.

Another option is to look into using Custom Validation as a way to enforce consistency.

[rcon-git]

the problem with custom validators (as I understand them) is they are a pass/fail. If the text is not all lowercase, all a validator can do is prevent the user from submitting until they've inputted the text as lowercase prior to the object being created. It won't fix it for them.

We want netbox to reformat the text so as to offer the path of least resistance to our users. Let them input the text however they want, copy/paste, etc., without having to change anything, then let netbox fix it for them.