What is the use of cleaned_data in Django

Question

Django says if form.is_valid() is True. form.cleaned_data is where all validated fields are stored. But I am confused about using the cleaned_data function.

form.cleaned_data['f1'] -- cleaned data request.POST.get('f1') -- un-validated data

I have a model form in Django.

if form1.is_valid():
    form1.save()

Does this save cleaned_data to the model or does it save unvalidated data.

form2=form1.save(commit=False);

Does form2 contain form1's cleaned_data or unvalidated data.

Apart from converting any date to python datetime object, is there a good example of benefit of using cleaned_data vs unvalidated data. Thanks

Answer 1

TL;DR

form.cleaned_data returns a dictionary of validated form input fields and their values, where string primary keys are returned as objects.

form.data returns a dictionary of un-validated form input fields and their values in string format (i.e. not objects).

Example by code

In my forms.py I have two fields:

class Loginform(forms.Form):
    username=forms.CharField()
    password=forms.CharField(widget=forms.PasswordInput)

and in my views.py:

def login_page(request):
    form=Loginform(request.POST or None)
    if form.is_valid():
        print(form.cleaned_data)

The above code prints the following output:

{'username': 'xyz', 'password': 'shinchan'}

If instead views.py contains:

def login_page(request):
    form=Loginform(request.POST or None)
    if form.is_valid():
        print(form)

The above code prints the following:

 <tr><th><label for="id_username">Username:</label></th><td><input type="text" name="username" value="xyz" required id="id_username"></td></tr>
<tr><th><label for="id_password">Password:</label></th><td><input type="password" name="password" required id="id_password"></td></tr>