I want to have a ModelForm that can create_or_update a model instance based on the request parameters. I've been trying to cobble something together, but am realizing that my python fu is not strong enough, and the ModelForm implementation code is a quite hairy. I found this create_or_update snipplet for working with a Model, but I think it would be incredibly useful if it were integrated with a ModelForm. I would expect it to behave similarly to ModelForm.save(): class BetterModelForm(forms.ModelForm): def init(self, *args, **kwargs) def create_or_update(self): #magic return (instance, created, updated) Conversely I'd also be interested in hearing compelling reasons why this is not a good idea.