title: Is there a simple way to suppress WTForms form field default values?
body: <p>Whenever I use a WTForms form to display data from a database:</p>
  
  <pre><code>sql = "SELECT * FROM rolodex WHERE rolodex_id = " + rolodex_id
  cursor = mdb_connect("DictCursor")
  cursor.execute(sql)
  row = cursor.fetchone()
  form = RolodexEntry(**row)
  return bottle.template('entry',rolodex_id=rolodex_id,form=form)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(all form fields are TextFields)</p>
  
  <p>empty and NULL database field values are displayed as "None".  I want them to just be empty.  I can think of a couple of ways to solve this problem, but am wondering if there is some WTForms-approved way to set the default value of a Textfield to be the empty string rather than None?</p>
  
  <p>Bottle templates give me a simple if somewhat tedious way of solving this problem on a case by case basis:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;p style='font-weight: bold; color: blue; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width:   50%'&gt;
  % if form.firstname.data:
    {{form.firstname.data}} 
  % end 
  % if form.lastname.data:
    {{form.lastname.data}}
  % end
  &lt;/p&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I tried changing the default attribute in the field definition:</p>
  
  <pre><code>firstname  = TextField('First Name',[validators.length(max=40)], default="")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but this didn't do anything; i.e. form.firstname.data still displays as <code>None</code> if the field is empty in the database.</p>