The best way to do this is first of all to pass a function argument to populate your options at runtime, and then provide the default:
def get_topics():
return (t.id, t.name) for t in Topic.select()
W.CheckBoxList(name='topics',options=get_topics,
validator=ForEach(convert_to_list=True))
In your controller method for example:
@turbogears.expose(template='myapp.templates.welcome')
def index(self, *args, **kw):
cherrypy.request.input_values={''topics':identity.user.topics}
return dict()
