The Django admin site¶

One of the most powerful parts of Django is the automatic admin interface. It reads metadata from your models to provide a quick, model-centric interface where trusted users can manage content on your site. The admin’s recommended use is limited to an organization’s internal management tool. It’s not intended for building your entire front end around.

The admin has many hooks for customization, but beware of trying to use those hooks exclusively. If you need to provide a more process-centric interface that abstracts away the implementation details of database tables and fields, then it’s probably time to write your own views.

In this document we discuss how to activate, use, and customize Django’s admin interface.

Overview¶

The admin is enabled in the default project template used by startproject.

For reference, here are the requirements:

Add 'django.contrib.admin' to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.
The admin has four dependencies - django.contrib.auth, django.contrib.contenttypes, django.contrib.messages and django.contrib.sessions. If these applications are not in your INSTALLED_APPS list, add them.
Add django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth and django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages to the 'context_processors' option of the DjangoTemplates backend defined in your TEMPLATES as well as django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware and django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware to MIDDLEWARE. These are all active by default, so you only need to do this if you’ve manually tweaked the settings.
Determine which of your application’s models should be editable in the admin interface.
For each of those models, optionally create a ModelAdmin class that encapsulates the customized admin functionality and options for that particular model.
Instantiate an AdminSite and tell it about each of your models and ModelAdmin classes.
Hook the AdminSite instance into your URLconf.

After you’ve taken these steps, you’ll be able to use your Django admin site by visiting the URL you hooked it into (/admin/, by default). If you need to create a user to login with, you can use the createsuperuser command.

`ModelAdmin` objects¶

class ModelAdmin[source]¶

The ModelAdmin class is the representation of a model in the admin interface. Usually, these are stored in a file named admin.py in your application. Let’s take a look at a very simple example of the ModelAdmin:

from django.contrib import admin
from myproject.myapp.models import Author

class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    pass
admin.site.register(Author, AuthorAdmin)

Do you need a ModelAdmin object at all?

In the preceding example, the ModelAdmin class doesn’t define any custom values (yet). As a result, the default admin interface will be provided. If you are happy with the default admin interface, you don’t need to define a ModelAdmin object at all – you can register the model class without providing a ModelAdmin description. The preceding example could be simplified to:

from django.contrib import admin
from myproject.myapp.models import Author

admin.site.register(Author)

The `register` decorator¶

register(*models, site=django.admin.sites.site)[source]¶

There is also a decorator for registering your ModelAdmin classes:

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Author

@admin.register(Author)
class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    pass

It is given one or more model classes to register with the ModelAdmin and an optional keyword argument site if you are not using the default AdminSite:

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Author, Reader, Editor
from myproject.admin_site import custom_admin_site

@admin.register(Author, Reader, Editor, site=custom_admin_site)
class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    pass

You can’t use this decorator if you have to reference your model admin class in its __init__() method, e.g. super(PersonAdmin, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs). If you are using Python 3 and don’t have to worry about supporting Python 2, you can use super().__init__(*args, **kwargs) . Otherwise, you’ll have to use admin.site.register() instead of this decorator.

Discovery of admin files¶

When you put 'django.contrib.admin' in your INSTALLED_APPS setting, Django automatically looks for an admin module in each application and imports it.

class apps.AdminConfig¶: This is the default AppConfig class for the admin. It calls autodiscover() when Django starts.

class apps.SimpleAdminConfig¶: This class works like AdminConfig, except it doesn’t call autodiscover().

autodiscover()[source]¶

This function attempts to import an admin module in each installed application. Such modules are expected to register models with the admin.

Typically you won’t need to call this function directly as AdminConfig calls it when Django starts.

If you are using a custom AdminSite, it is common to import all of the ModelAdmin subclasses into your code and register them to the custom AdminSite. In that case, in order to disable auto-discovery, you should put 'django.contrib.admin.apps.SimpleAdminConfig' instead of 'django.contrib.admin' in your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

`ModelAdmin` options¶

The ModelAdmin is very flexible. It has several options for dealing with customizing the interface. All options are defined on the ModelAdmin subclass:

from django.contrib import admin

class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    date_hierarchy = 'pub_date'

ModelAdmin.actions¶: A list of actions to make available on the change list page. See Admin actions for details.

ModelAdmin.actions_on_top¶

ModelAdmin.actions_on_bottom¶: Controls where on the page the actions bar appears. By default, the admin changelist displays actions at the top of the page (actions_on_top = True; actions_on_bottom = False).

ModelAdmin.actions_selection_counter¶: Controls whether a selection counter is displayed next to the action dropdown. By default, the admin changelist will display it (actions_selection_counter = True).

ModelAdmin.date_hierarchy¶

Set date_hierarchy to the name of a DateField or DateTimeField in your model, and the change list page will include a date-based drilldown navigation by that field.

Example:

date_hierarchy = 'pub_date'

You can also specify a field on a related model using the __ lookup, for example:

date_hierarchy = 'author__pub_date'

This will intelligently populate itself based on available data, e.g. if all the dates are in one month, it’ll show the day-level drill-down only.

Changed in Django 1.11:

The ability to reference fields on related models was added.

Note

date_hierarchy uses QuerySet.datetimes() internally. Please refer to its documentation for some caveats when time zone support is enabled (USE_TZ = True).

ModelAdmin.empty_value_display¶

This attribute overrides the default display value for record’s fields that are empty (None, empty string, etc.). The default value is - (a dash). For example:

from django.contrib import admin

class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    empty_value_display = '-empty-'

You can also override empty_value_display for all admin pages with AdminSite.empty_value_display, or for specific fields like this:

from django.contrib import admin

class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    fields = ('name', 'title', 'view_birth_date')

    def view_birth_date(self, obj):
        return obj.birth_date

    view_birth_date.empty_value_display = '???'

ModelAdmin.exclude¶

This attribute, if given, should be a list of field names to exclude from the form.

For example, let’s consider the following model:

from django.db import models

class Author(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    title = models.CharField(max_length=3)
    birth_date = models.DateField(blank=True, null=True)

If you want a form for the Author model that includes only the name and title fields, you would specify fields or exclude like this:

from django.contrib import admin

class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    fields = ('name', 'title')

class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    exclude = ('birth_date',)

Since the Author model only has three fields, name, title, and birth_date, the forms resulting from the above declarations will contain exactly the same fields.

ModelAdmin.fields¶

Use the fields option to make simple layout changes in the forms on the “add” and “change” pages such as showing only a subset of available fields, modifying their order, or grouping them into rows. For example, you could define a simpler version of the admin form for the django.contrib.flatpages.models.FlatPage model as follows:

class FlatPageAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    fields = ('url', 'title', 'content')

In the above example, only the fields url, title and content will be displayed, sequentially, in the form. fields can contain values defined in ModelAdmin.readonly_fields to be displayed as read-only.

For more complex layout needs, see the fieldsets option.

The fields option, unlike list_display, may only contain names of fields on the model or the form specified by form. It may contain callables only if they are listed in readonly_fields.

To display multiple fields on the same line, wrap those fields in their own tuple. In this example, the url and title fields will display on the same line and the content field will be displayed below them on its own line:

class FlatPageAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    fields = (('url', 'title'), 'content')

Note

This fields option should not be confused with the fields dictionary key that is within the fieldsets option, as described in the next section.

If neither fields nor fieldsets options are present, Django will default to displaying each field that isn’t an AutoField and has editable=True, in a single fieldset, in the same order as the fields are defined in the model.

ModelAdmin.fieldsets¶

Set fieldsets to control the layout of admin “add” and “change” pages.

fieldsets is a list of two-tuples, in which each two-tuple represents a <fieldset> on the admin form page. (A <fieldset> is a “section” of the form.)

The two-tuples are in the format (name, field_options), where name is a string representing the title of the fieldset and field_options is a dictionary of information about the fieldset, including a list of fields to be displayed in it.

A full example, taken from the django.contrib.flatpages.models.FlatPage model:

from django.contrib import admin

class FlatPageAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    fieldsets = (
        (None, {
            'fields': ('url', 'title', 'content', 'sites')
        }),
        ('Advanced options', {
            'classes': ('collapse',),
            'fields': ('registration_required', 'template_name'),
        }),
    )

This results in an admin page that looks like:

If neither fieldsets nor fields options are present, Django will default to displaying each field that isn’t an AutoField and has editable=True, in a single fieldset, in the same order as the fields are defined in the model.

The field_options dictionary can have the following keys:

fields
A tuple of field names to display in this fieldset. This key is required.

Example:
{ 'fields': ('first_name', 'last_name', 'address', 'city', 'state'), }
As with the fields option, to display multiple fields on the same line, wrap those fields in their own tuple. In this example, the first_name and last_name fields will display on the same line:
{ 'fields': (('first_name', 'last_name'), 'address', 'city', 'state'), }
fields can contain values defined in readonly_fields to be displayed as read-only.

If you add the name of a callable to fields, the same rule applies as with the fields option: the callable must be listed in readonly_fields.
classes
A list or tuple containing extra CSS classes to apply to the fieldset.

Example:
{ 'classes': ('wide', 'extrapretty'), }
Two useful classes defined by the default admin site stylesheet are collapse and wide. Fieldsets with the collapse style will be initially collapsed in the admin and replaced with a small “click to expand” link. Fieldsets with the wide style will be given extra horizontal space.
description

A string of optional extra text to be displayed at the top of each fieldset, under the heading of the fieldset. This string is not rendered for TabularInline due to its layout.

Note that this value is not HTML-escaped when it’s displayed in the admin interface. This lets you include HTML if you so desire. Alternatively you can use plain text and django.utils.html.escape() to escape any HTML special characters.

ModelAdmin.filter_horizontal¶: By default, a ManyToManyField is displayed in the admin site with a <select multiple>. However, multiple-select boxes can be difficult to use when selecting many items. Adding a ManyToManyField to this list will instead use a nifty unobtrusive JavaScript “filter” interface that allows searching within the options. The unselected and selected options appear in two boxes side by side. See filter_vertical to use a vertical interface.

ModelAdmin.filter_vertical¶: Same as filter_horizontal, but uses a vertical display of the filter interface with the box of unselected options appearing above the box of selected options.

ModelAdmin.form¶

By default a ModelForm is dynamically created for your model. It is used to create the form presented on both the add/change pages. You can easily provide your own ModelForm to override any default form behavior on the add/change pages. Alternatively, you can customize the default form rather than specifying an entirely new one by using the ModelAdmin.get_form() method.

For an example see the section Adding custom validation to the admin.

Note

If you define the Meta.model attribute on a ModelForm, you must also define the Meta.fields attribute (or the Meta.exclude attribute). However, since the admin has its own way of defining fields, the Meta.fields attribute will be ignored.

If the ModelForm is only going to be used for the admin, the easiest solution is to omit the Meta.model attribute, since ModelAdmin will provide the correct model to use. Alternatively, you can set fields = [] in the Meta class to satisfy the validation on the ModelForm.

Note

If your ModelForm and ModelAdmin both define an exclude option then ModelAdmin takes precedence:

from django import forms
from django.contrib import admin
from myapp.models import Person

class PersonForm(forms.ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        model = Person
        exclude = ['name']

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    exclude = ['age']
    form = PersonForm

In the above example, the “age” field will be excluded but the “name” field will be included in the generated form.

ModelAdmin.formfield_overrides¶

This provides a quick-and-dirty way to override some of the Field options for use in the admin. formfield_overrides is a dictionary mapping a field class to a dict of arguments to pass to the field at construction time.

Since that’s a bit abstract, let’s look at a concrete example. The most common use of formfield_overrides is to add a custom widget for a certain type of field. So, imagine we’ve written a RichTextEditorWidget that we’d like to use for large text fields instead of the default <textarea>. Here’s how we’d do that:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib import admin

# Import our custom widget and our model from where they're defined
from myapp.widgets import RichTextEditorWidget
from myapp.models import MyModel

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    formfield_overrides = {
        models.TextField: {'widget': RichTextEditorWidget},
    }

Note that the key in the dictionary is the actual field class, not a string. The value is another dictionary; these arguments will be passed to the form field’s __init__() method. See The Forms API for details.

Warning

If you want to use a custom widget with a relation field (i.e. ForeignKey or ManyToManyField), make sure you haven’t included that field’s name in raw_id_fields or radio_fields.

formfield_overrides won’t let you change the widget on relation fields that have raw_id_fields or radio_fields set. That’s because raw_id_fields and radio_fields imply custom widgets of their own.

ModelAdmin.inlines¶: See InlineModelAdmin objects below as well as ModelAdmin.get_formsets_with_inlines().

ModelAdmin.list_display¶

Set list_display to control which fields are displayed on the change list page of the admin.

Example:

list_display = ('first_name', 'last_name')

If you don’t set list_display, the admin site will display a single column that displays the __str__() (__unicode__() on Python 2) representation of each object.

You have four possible values that can be used in list_display:

A field of the model. For example:

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('first_name', 'last_name')

A callable that accepts one parameter for the model instance. For example:

def upper_case_name(obj):
    return ("%s %s" % (obj.first_name, obj.last_name)).upper()
upper_case_name.short_description = 'Name'

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = (upper_case_name,)

A string representing an attribute on the ModelAdmin. This behaves same as the callable. For example:

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('upper_case_name',)

    def upper_case_name(self, obj):
        return ("%s %s" % (obj.first_name, obj.last_name)).upper()
    upper_case_name.short_description = 'Name'

A string representing an attribute on the model. This behaves almost the same as the callable, but self in this context is the model instance. Here’s a full model example:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib import admin

class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    birthday = models.DateField()

    def decade_born_in(self):
        return self.birthday.strftime('%Y')[:3] + "0's"
    decade_born_in.short_description = 'Birth decade'

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('name', 'decade_born_in')

A few special cases to note about list_display:

If the field is a ForeignKey, Django will display the __str__() (__unicode__() on Python 2) of the related object.
ManyToManyField fields aren’t supported, because that would entail executing a separate SQL statement for each row in the table. If you want to do this nonetheless, give your model a custom method, and add that method’s name to list_display. (See below for more on custom methods in list_display.)
If the field is a BooleanField or NullBooleanField, Django will display a pretty “on” or “off” icon instead of True or False.

If the string given is a method of the model, ModelAdmin or a callable, Django will HTML-escape the output by default. To escape user input and allow your own unescaped tags, use format_html().

Here’s a full example model:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib import admin
from django.utils.html import format_html

class Person(models.Model):
    first_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    last_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    color_code = models.CharField(max_length=6)

    def colored_name(self):
        return format_html(
            '<span style="color: #{};">{} {}</span>',
            self.color_code,
            self.first_name,
            self.last_name,
        )

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('first_name', 'last_name', 'colored_name')

Deprecated since version 1.9: In older versions, you could add an allow_tags attribute to the method to prevent auto-escaping. This attribute is deprecated as it’s safer to use format_html(), format_html_join(), or mark_safe() instead.

As some examples have already demonstrated, when using a callable, a model method, or a ModelAdmin method, you can customize the column’s title by adding a short_description attribute to the callable.

If the value of a field is None, an empty string, or an iterable without elements, Django will display - (a dash). You can override this with AdminSite.empty_value_display:

from django.contrib import admin

admin.site.empty_value_display = '(None)'

You can also use ModelAdmin.empty_value_display:

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    empty_value_display = 'unknown'

Or on a field level:

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('name', 'birth_date_view')

    def birth_date_view(self, obj):
         return obj.birth_date

    birth_date_view.empty_value_display = 'unknown'

If the string given is a method of the model, ModelAdmin or a callable that returns True or False Django will display a pretty “on” or “off” icon if you give the method a boolean attribute whose value is True.

Here’s a full example model:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib import admin

class Person(models.Model):
    first_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    birthday = models.DateField()

    def born_in_fifties(self):
        return self.birthday.strftime('%Y')[:3] == '195'
    born_in_fifties.boolean = True

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('name', 'born_in_fifties')

The __str__() (__unicode__() on Python 2) method is just as valid in list_display as any other model method, so it’s perfectly OK to do this:
```
list_display = ('__str__', 'some_other_field')
```

Usually, elements of list_display that aren’t actual database fields can’t be used in sorting (because Django does all the sorting at the database level).

However, if an element of list_display represents a certain database field, you can indicate this fact by setting the admin_order_field attribute of the item.

For example:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib import admin
from django.utils.html import format_html

class Person(models.Model):
    first_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    color_code = models.CharField(max_length=6)

    def colored_first_name(self):
        return format_html(
            '<span style="color: #{};">{}</span>',
            self.color_code,
            self.first_name,
        )

    colored_first_name.admin_order_field = 'first_name'

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('first_name', 'colored_first_name')

The above will tell Django to order by the first_name field when trying to sort by colored_first_name in the admin.

To indicate descending order with admin_order_field you can use a hyphen prefix on the field name. Using the above example, this would look like:

colored_first_name.admin_order_field = '-first_name'

admin_order_field supports query lookups to sort by values on related models. This example includes an “author first name” column in the list display and allows sorting it by first name:

class Blog(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    author = models.ForeignKey(Person, on_delete=models.CASCADE)

class BlogAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('title', 'author', 'author_first_name')

    def author_first_name(self, obj):
        return obj.author.first_name

    author_first_name.admin_order_field = 'author__first_name'

Elements of list_display can also be properties. Please note however, that due to the way properties work in Python, setting short_description on a property is only possible when using the property() function and not with the @property decorator.

For example:

class Person(models.Model):
    first_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    last_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)

    def my_property(self):
        return self.first_name + ' ' + self.last_name
    my_property.short_description = "Full name of the person"

    full_name = property(my_property)

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('full_name',)

The field names in list_display will also appear as CSS classes in the HTML output, in the form of column-<field_name> on each <th> element. This can be used to set column widths in a CSS file for example.
Django will try to interpret every element of list_display in this order:
- A field of the model.
- A callable.
- A string representing a ModelAdmin attribute.
- A string representing a model attribute.
For example if you have first_name as a model field and as a ModelAdmin attribute, the model field will be used.

ModelAdmin.list_display_links¶

Use list_display_links to control if and which fields in list_display should be linked to the “change” page for an object.

By default, the change list page will link the first column – the first field specified in list_display – to the change page for each item. But list_display_links lets you change this:

Set it to None to get no links at all.
Set it to a list or tuple of fields (in the same format as list_display) whose columns you want converted to links.

You can specify one or many fields. As long as the fields appear in list_display, Django doesn’t care how many (or how few) fields are linked. The only requirement is that if you want to use list_display_links in this fashion, you must define list_display.

In this example, the first_name and last_name fields will be linked on the change list page:

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('first_name', 'last_name', 'birthday')
    list_display_links = ('first_name', 'last_name')

In this example, the change list page grid will have no links:

class AuditEntryAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('timestamp', 'message')
    list_display_links = None

ModelAdmin.list_editable¶

Set list_editable to a list of field names on the model which will allow editing on the change list page. That is, fields listed in list_editable will be displayed as form widgets on the change list page, allowing users to edit and save multiple rows at once.

Note

list_editable interacts with a couple of other options in particular ways; you should note the following rules:

Any field in list_editable must also be in list_display. You can’t edit a field that’s not displayed!
The same field can’t be listed in both list_editable and list_display_links – a field can’t be both a form and a link.

You’ll get a validation error if either of these rules are broken.

ModelAdmin.list_filter¶

Set list_filter to activate filters in the right sidebar of the change list page of the admin, as illustrated in the following screenshot:

list_filter should be a list or tuple of elements, where each element should be of one of the following types:

a field name, where the specified field should be either a BooleanField, CharField, DateField, DateTimeField, IntegerField, ForeignKey or ManyToManyField, for example:
```
class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = ('is_staff', 'company')
```
Field names in list_filter can also span relations using the __ lookup, for example:
```
class PersonAdmin(admin.UserAdmin):
    list_filter = ('company__name',)
```

a class inheriting from django.contrib.admin.SimpleListFilter, which you need to provide the title and parameter_name attributes to and override the lookups and queryset methods, e.g.:

from datetime import date

from django.contrib import admin
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

class DecadeBornListFilter(admin.SimpleListFilter):
    # Human-readable title which will be displayed in the
    # right admin sidebar just above the filter options.
    title = _('decade born')

    # Parameter for the filter that will be used in the URL query.
    parameter_name = 'decade'

    def lookups(self, request, model_admin):
        """
        Returns a list of tuples. The first element in each
        tuple is the coded value for the option that will
        appear in the URL query. The second element is the
        human-readable name for the option that will appear
        in the right sidebar.
        """
        return (
            ('80s', _('in the eighties')),
            ('90s', _('in the nineties')),
        )

    def queryset(self, request, queryset):
        """
        Returns the filtered queryset based on the value
        provided in the query string and retrievable via
        `self.value()`.
        """
        # Compare the requested value (either '80s' or '90s')
        # to decide how to filter the queryset.
        if self.value() == '80s':
            return queryset.filter(birthday__gte=date(1980, 1, 1),
                                    birthday__lte=date(1989, 12, 31))
        if self.value() == '90s':
            return queryset.filter(birthday__gte=date(1990, 1, 1),
                                    birthday__lte=date(1999, 12, 31))

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = (DecadeBornListFilter,)

Note

As a convenience, the HttpRequest object is passed to the lookups and queryset methods, for example:

class AuthDecadeBornListFilter(DecadeBornListFilter):

    def lookups(self, request, model_admin):
        if request.user.is_superuser:
            return super(AuthDecadeBornListFilter, self).lookups(request, model_admin)

    def queryset(self, request, queryset):
        if request.user.is_superuser:
            return super(AuthDecadeBornListFilter, self).queryset(request, queryset)

Also as a convenience, the ModelAdmin object is passed to the lookups method, for example if you want to base the lookups on the available data:

class AdvancedDecadeBornListFilter(DecadeBornListFilter):

    def lookups(self, request, model_admin):
        """
        Only show the lookups if there actually is
        anyone born in the corresponding decades.
        """
        qs = model_admin.get_queryset(request)
        if qs.filter(birthday__gte=date(1980, 1, 1),
                      birthday__lte=date(1989, 12, 31)).exists():
            yield ('80s', _('in the eighties'))
        if qs.filter(birthday__gte=date(1990, 1, 1),
                      birthday__lte=date(1999, 12, 31)).exists():
            yield ('90s', _('in the nineties'))

a tuple, where the first element is a field name and the second element is a class inheriting from django.contrib.admin.FieldListFilter, for example:
```
class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = (
        ('is_staff', admin.BooleanFieldListFilter),
    )
```
You can limit the choices of a related model to the objects involved in that relation using RelatedOnlyFieldListFilter:
```
class BookAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = (
        ('author', admin.RelatedOnlyFieldListFilter),
    )
```
Assuming author is a ForeignKey to a User model, this will limit the list_filter choices to the users who have written a book instead of listing all users.

Note

The FieldListFilter API is considered internal and might be changed.

List filter’s typically appear only if the filter has more than one choice. A filter’s has_output() method controls whether or not it appears.

It is possible to specify a custom template for rendering a list filter:

class FilterWithCustomTemplate(admin.SimpleListFilter):
    template = "custom_template.html"

See the default template provided by Django (admin/filter.html) for a concrete example.

ModelAdmin.list_max_show_all¶: Set list_max_show_all to control how many items can appear on a “Show all” admin change list page. The admin will display a “Show all” link on the change list only if the total result count is less than or equal to this setting. By default, this is set to 200.

ModelAdmin.list_per_page¶: Set list_per_page to control how many items appear on each paginated admin change list page. By default, this is set to 100.

ModelAdmin.list_select_related¶

Set list_select_related to tell Django to use select_related() in retrieving the list of objects on the admin change list page. This can save you a bunch of database queries.

The value should be either a boolean, a list or a tuple. Default is False.

When value is True, select_related() will always be called. When value is set to False, Django will look at list_display and call select_related() if any ForeignKey is present.

If you need more fine-grained control, use a tuple (or list) as value for list_select_related. Empty tuple will prevent Django from calling select_related at all. Any other tuple will be passed directly to select_related as parameters. For example:

class ArticleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_select_related = ('author', 'category')

will call select_related('author', 'category').

If you need to specify a dynamic value based on the request, you can implement a get_list_select_related() method.

ModelAdmin.ordering¶

Set ordering to specify how lists of objects should be ordered in the Django admin views. This should be a list or tuple in the same format as a model’s ordering parameter.

If this isn’t provided, the Django admin will use the model’s default ordering.

If you need to specify a dynamic order (for example depending on user or language) you can implement a get_ordering() method.

ModelAdmin.paginator¶: The paginator class to be used for pagination. By default, django.core.paginator.Paginator is used. If the custom paginator class doesn’t have the same constructor interface as django.core.paginator.Paginator, you will also need to provide an implementation for ModelAdmin.get_paginator().

ModelAdmin.prepopulated_fields¶

Set prepopulated_fields to a dictionary mapping field names to the fields it should prepopulate from:

class ArticleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    prepopulated_fields = {"slug": ("title",)}

When set, the given fields will use a bit of JavaScript to populate from the fields assigned. The main use for this functionality is to automatically generate the value for SlugField fields from one or more other fields. The generated value is produced by concatenating the values of the source fields, and then by transforming that result into a valid slug (e.g. substituting dashes for spaces).

prepopulated_fields doesn’t accept DateTimeField, ForeignKey, OneToOneField, and ManyToManyField fields.

ModelAdmin.preserve_filters¶: The admin now preserves filters on the list view after creating, editing or deleting an object. You can restore the previous behavior of clearing filters by setting this attribute to False.

ModelAdmin.radio_fields¶

By default, Django’s admin uses a select-box interface (<select>) for fields that are ForeignKey or have choices set. If a field is present in radio_fields, Django will use a radio-button interface instead. Assuming group is a ForeignKey on the Person model:

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    radio_fields = {"group": admin.VERTICAL}

You have the choice of using HORIZONTAL or VERTICAL from the django.contrib.admin module.

Don’t include a field in radio_fields unless it’s a ForeignKey or has choices set.

ModelAdmin.raw_id_fields¶

By default, Django’s admin uses a select-box interface (<select>) for fields that are ForeignKey. Sometimes you don’t want to incur the overhead of having to select all the related instances to display in the drop-down.

raw_id_fields is a list of fields you would like to change into an Input widget for either a ForeignKey or ManyToManyField:

class ArticleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    raw_id_fields = ("newspaper",)

The raw_id_fields Input widget should contain a primary key if the field is a ForeignKey or a comma separated list of values if the field is a ManyToManyField. The raw_id_fields widget shows a magnifying glass button next to the field which allows users to search for and select a value:

ModelAdmin.readonly_fields¶

By default the admin shows all fields as editable. Any fields in this option (which should be a list or tuple) will display its data as-is and non-editable; they are also excluded from the ModelForm used for creating and editing. Note that when specifying ModelAdmin.fields or ModelAdmin.fieldsets the read-only fields must be present to be shown (they are ignored otherwise).

If readonly_fields is used without defining explicit ordering through ModelAdmin.fields or ModelAdmin.fieldsets they will be added last after all editable fields.

A read-only field can not only display data from a model’s field, it can also display the output of a model’s method or a method of the ModelAdmin class itself. This is very similar to the way ModelAdmin.list_display behaves. This provides an easy way to use the admin interface to provide feedback on the status of the objects being edited, for example:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.utils.html import format_html_join
from django.utils.safestring import mark_safe

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    readonly_fields = ('address_report',)

    def address_report(self, instance):
        # assuming get_full_address() returns a list of strings
        # for each line of the address and you want to separate each
        # line by a linebreak
        return format_html_join(
            mark_safe('<br/>'),
            '{}',
            ((line,) for line in instance.get_full_address()),
        ) or mark_safe("<span class='errors'>I can't determine this address.</span>")

    # short_description functions like a model field's verbose_name
    address_report.short_description = "Address"

ModelAdmin.save_as¶

Set save_as to enable a “save as new” feature on admin change forms.

Normally, objects have three save options: “Save”, “Save and continue editing”, and “Save and add another”. If save_as is True, “Save and add another” will be replaced by a “Save as new” button that creates a new object (with a new ID) rather than updating the existing object.

By default, save_as is set to False.

ModelAdmin.save_as_continue¶

New in Django 1.10.

When save_as=True, the default redirect after saving the new object is to the change view for that object. If you set save_as_continue=False, the redirect will be to the changelist view.

By default, save_as_continue is set to True.

ModelAdmin.save_on_top¶

Set save_on_top to add save buttons across the top of your admin change forms.

Normally, the save buttons appear only at the bottom of the forms. If you set save_on_top, the buttons will appear both on the top and the bottom.

By default, save_on_top is set to False.

ModelAdmin.search_fields¶

Set search_fields to enable a search box on the admin change list page. This should be set to a list of field names that will be searched whenever somebody submits a search query in that text box.

These fields should be some kind of text field, such as CharField or TextField. You can also perform a related lookup on a ForeignKey or ManyToManyField with the lookup API “follow” notation:

search_fields = ['foreign_key__related_fieldname']

For example, if you have a blog entry with an author, the following definition would enable searching blog entries by the email address of the author:

search_fields = ['user__email']

When somebody does a search in the admin search box, Django splits the search query into words and returns all objects that contain each of the words, case insensitive, where each word must be in at least one of search_fields. For example, if search_fields is set to ['first_name', 'last_name'] and a user searches for john lennon, Django will do the equivalent of this SQL WHERE clause:

WHERE (first_name ILIKE '%john%' OR last_name ILIKE '%john%')
AND (first_name ILIKE '%lennon%' OR last_name ILIKE '%lennon%')

For faster and/or more restrictive searches, prefix the field name with an operator:

^

Use the ‘^’ operator to match starting at the beginning of the field. For example, if search_fields is set to ['^first_name', '^last_name'] and a user searches for john lennon, Django will do the equivalent of this SQL WHERE clause:

WHERE (first_name ILIKE 'john%' OR last_name ILIKE 'john%')
AND (first_name ILIKE 'lennon%' OR last_name ILIKE 'lennon%')

This query is more efficient than the normal '%john%' query, because the database only needs to check the beginning of a column’s data, rather than seeking through the entire column’s data. Plus, if the column has an index on it, some databases may be able to use the index for this query, even though it’s a LIKE query.

=

Use the ‘=’ operator for case-insensitive exact matching. For example, if search_fields is set to ['=first_name', '=last_name'] and a user searches for john lennon, Django will do the equivalent of this SQL WHERE clause:

WHERE (first_name ILIKE 'john' OR last_name ILIKE 'john')
AND (first_name ILIKE 'lennon' OR last_name ILIKE 'lennon')

Note that the query input is split by spaces, so, following this example, it’s currently not possible to search for all records in which first_name is exactly 'john winston' (containing a space).

@

Using the ‘@’ operator to perform a full text match. This is like the default search method but uses an index. Currently this is only available for MySQL.

If you need to customize search you can use ModelAdmin.get_search_results() to provide additional or alternate search behavior.

ModelAdmin.show_full_result_count¶

Set show_full_result_count to control whether the full count of objects should be displayed on a filtered admin page (e.g. 99 results (103 total)). If this option is set to False, a text like 99 results (Show all) is displayed instead.

The default of show_full_result_count=True generates a query to perform a full count on the table which can be expensive if the table contains a large number of rows.

ModelAdmin.view_on_site¶

Set view_on_site to control whether or not to display the “View on site” link. This link should bring you to a URL where you can display the saved object.

This value can be either a boolean flag or a callable. If True (the default), the object’s get_absolute_url() method will be used to generate the url.

If your model has a get_absolute_url() method but you don’t want the “View on site” button to appear, you only need to set view_on_site to False:

from django.contrib import admin

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    view_on_site = False

In case it is a callable, it accepts the model instance as a parameter. For example:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import reverse

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def view_on_site(self, obj):
        url = reverse('person-detail', kwargs={'slug': obj.slug})
        return 'https://example.com' + url

Custom template options¶

The Overriding admin templates section describes how to override or extend the default admin templates. Use the following options to override the default templates used by the ModelAdmin views:

ModelAdmin.add_form_template¶: Path to a custom template, used by add_view().

ModelAdmin.change_form_template¶: Path to a custom template, used by change_view().

ModelAdmin.change_list_template¶: Path to a custom template, used by changelist_view().

ModelAdmin.delete_confirmation_template¶: Path to a custom template, used by delete_view() for displaying a confirmation page when deleting one or more objects.

ModelAdmin.delete_selected_confirmation_template¶: Path to a custom template, used by the delete_selected action method for displaying a confirmation page when deleting one or more objects. See the actions documentation.

ModelAdmin.object_history_template¶: Path to a custom template, used by history_view().

ModelAdmin.popup_response_template¶: New in Django 1.11.

Path to a custom template, used by response_add(), response_change(), and response_delete().

`ModelAdmin` methods¶

Warning

When overriding ModelAdmin.save_model() and ModelAdmin.delete_model(), your code must save/delete the object. They aren’t meant for veto purposes, rather they allow you to perform extra operations.

ModelAdmin.save_model(request, obj, form, change)[source]¶

The save_model method is given the HttpRequest, a model instance, a ModelForm instance, and a boolean value based on whether it is adding or changing the object. Overriding this method allows doing pre- or post-save operations. Call super().save_model() to save the object using Model.save().

For example to attach request.user to the object prior to saving:

from django.contrib import admin

class ArticleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def save_model(self, request, obj, form, change):
        obj.user = request.user
        super(ArticleAdmin, self).save_model(request, obj, form, change)

ModelAdmin.delete_model(request, obj)[source]¶: The delete_model method is given the HttpRequest and a model instance. Overriding this method allows doing pre- or post-delete operations. Call super().delete_model() to delete the object using Model.delete().

ModelAdmin.save_formset(request, form, formset, change)[source]¶

The save_formset method is given the HttpRequest, the parent ModelForm instance and a boolean value based on whether it is adding or changing the parent object.

For example, to attach request.user to each changed formset model instance:

class ArticleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def save_formset(self, request, form, formset, change):
        instances = formset.save(commit=False)
        for obj in formset.deleted_objects:
            obj.delete()
        for instance in instances:
            instance.user = request.user
            instance.save()
        formset.save_m2m()

Other methods¶

ModelAdmin.add_view(request, form_url='', extra_context=None)[source]¶: Django view for the model instance addition page. See note below.

ModelAdmin.change_view(request, object_id, form_url='', extra_context=None)[source]¶: Django view for the model instance editing page. See note below.

ModelAdmin.changelist_view(request, extra_context=None)[source]¶: Django view for the model instances change list/actions page. See note below.

ModelAdmin.delete_view(request, object_id, extra_context=None)[source]¶: Django view for the model instance(s) deletion confirmation page. See note below.

ModelAdmin.history_view(request, object_id, extra_context=None)[source]¶: Django view for the page that shows the modification history for a given model instance.

Unlike the hook-type ModelAdmin methods detailed in the previous section, these five methods are in reality designed to be invoked as Django views from the admin application URL dispatching handler to render the pages that deal with model instances CRUD operations. As a result, completely overriding these methods will significantly change the behavior of the admin application.

One common reason for overriding these methods is to augment the context data that is provided to the template that renders the view. In the following example, the change view is overridden so that the rendered template is provided some extra mapping data that would not otherwise be available:

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

    # A template for a very customized change view:
    change_form_template = 'admin/myapp/extras/openstreetmap_change_form.html'

    def get_osm_info(self):
        # ...
        pass

    def change_view(self, request, object_id, form_url='', extra_context=None):
        extra_context = extra_context or {}
        extra_context['osm_data'] = self.get_osm_info()
        return super(MyModelAdmin, self).change_view(
            request, object_id, form_url, extra_context=extra_context,
        )

These views return TemplateResponse instances which allow you to easily customize the response data before rendering. For more details, see the TemplateResponse documentation.

`ModelAdmin` asset definitions¶

There are times where you would like add a bit of CSS and/or JavaScript to the add/change views. This can be accomplished by using a Media inner class on your ModelAdmin:

class ArticleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    class Media:
        css = {
            "all": ("my_styles.css",)
        }
        js = ("my_code.js",)

The staticfiles app prepends STATIC_URL (or MEDIA_URL if STATIC_URL is None) to any asset paths. The same rules apply as regular asset definitions on forms.

jQuery¶

Django admin JavaScript makes use of the jQuery library.

To avoid conflicts with user-supplied scripts or libraries, Django’s jQuery (version 2.2.3) is namespaced as django.jQuery. If you want to use jQuery in your own admin JavaScript without including a second copy, you can use the django.jQuery object on changelist and add/edit views.

Changed in Django 1.10:

The embedded jQuery was upgraded from 2.1.4 to 2.2.3.

The ModelAdmin class requires jQuery by default, so there is no need to add jQuery to your ModelAdmin’s list of media resources unless you have a specific need. For example, if you require the jQuery library to be in the global namespace (for example when using third-party jQuery plugins) or if you need a newer version of jQuery, you will have to include your own copy.

Django provides both uncompressed and ‘minified’ versions of jQuery, as jquery.js and jquery.min.js respectively.

ModelAdmin and InlineModelAdmin have a media property that returns a list of Media objects which store paths to the JavaScript files for the forms and/or formsets. If DEBUG is True it will return the uncompressed versions of the various JavaScript files, including jquery.js; if not, it will return the ‘minified’ versions.

Adding custom validation to the admin¶

Adding custom validation of data in the admin is quite easy. The automatic admin interface reuses django.forms, and the ModelAdmin class gives you the ability define your own form:

class ArticleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    form = MyArticleAdminForm

MyArticleAdminForm can be defined anywhere as long as you import where needed. Now within your form you can add your own custom validation for any field:

class MyArticleAdminForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def clean_name(self):
        # do something that validates your data
        return self.cleaned_data["name"]

It is important you use a ModelForm here otherwise things can break. See the forms documentation on custom validation and, more specifically, the model form validation notes for more information.

`InlineModelAdmin` objects¶

class InlineModelAdmin¶

class TabularInline[source]¶

class StackedInline[source]¶

The admin interface has the ability to edit models on the same page as a parent model. These are called inlines. Suppose you have these two models:

from django.db import models

class Author(models.Model):
   name = models.CharField(max_length=100)

class Book(models.Model):
   author = models.ForeignKey(Author, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
   title = models.CharField(max_length=100)

You can edit the books authored by an author on the author page. You add inlines to a model by specifying them in a ModelAdmin.inlines:

from django.contrib import admin

class BookInline(admin.TabularInline):
    model = Book

class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    inlines = [
        BookInline,
    ]

Django provides two subclasses of InlineModelAdmin and they are:

TabularInline
StackedInline

The difference between these two is merely the template used to render them.

`InlineModelAdmin` options¶

InlineModelAdmin shares many of the same features as ModelAdmin, and adds some of its own (the shared features are actually defined in the BaseModelAdmin superclass). The shared features are:

The InlineModelAdmin class adds:

InlineModelAdmin.model¶: The model which the inline is using. This is required.

InlineModelAdmin.fk_name¶: The name of the foreign key on the model. In most cases this will be dealt with automatically, but fk_name must be specified explicitly if there are more than one foreign key to the same parent model.

InlineModelAdmin.formset¶: This defaults to BaseInlineFormSet. Using your own formset can give you many possibilities of customization. Inlines are built around model formsets.

InlineModelAdmin.form¶: The value for form defaults to ModelForm. This is what is passed through to inlineformset_factory() when creating the formset for this inline.

Warning

When writing custom validation for InlineModelAdmin forms, be cautious of writing validation that relies on features of the parent model. If the parent model fails to validate, it may be left in an inconsistent state as described in the warning in Validation on a ModelForm.

InlineModelAdmin.classes¶: New in Django 1.10.

A list or tuple containing extra CSS classes to apply to the fieldset that is rendered for the inlines. Defaults to None. As with classes configured in fieldsets, inlines with a collapse class will be initially collapsed and their header will have a small “show” link.

InlineModelAdmin.extra¶

This controls the number of extra forms the formset will display in addition to the initial forms. See the formsets documentation for more information.

For users with JavaScript-enabled browsers, an “Add another” link is provided to enable any number of additional inlines to be added in addition to those provided as a result of the extra argument.

The dynamic link will not appear if the number of currently displayed forms exceeds max_num, or if the user does not have JavaScript enabled.

InlineModelAdmin.get_extra() also allows you to customize the number of extra forms.

InlineModelAdmin.max_num¶

This controls the maximum number of forms to show in the inline. This doesn’t directly correlate to the number of objects, but can if the value is small enough. See Limiting the number of editable objects for more information.

InlineModelAdmin.get_max_num() also allows you to customize the maximum number of extra forms.

InlineModelAdmin.min_num¶

This controls the minimum number of forms to show in the inline. See modelformset_factory() for more information.

InlineModelAdmin.get_min_num() also allows you to customize the minimum number of displayed forms.

InlineModelAdmin.raw_id_fields¶

By default, Django’s admin uses a select-box interface (<select>) for fields that are ForeignKey. Sometimes you don’t want to incur the overhead of having to select all the related instances to display in the drop-down.

raw_id_fields is a list of fields you would like to change into an Input widget for either a ForeignKey or ManyToManyField:

class BookInline(admin.TabularInline):
    model = Book
    raw_id_fields = ("pages",)

InlineModelAdmin.template¶: The template used to render the inline on the page.

InlineModelAdmin.verbose_name¶: An override to the verbose_name found in the model’s inner Meta class.

InlineModelAdmin.verbose_name_plural¶: An override to the verbose_name_plural found in the model’s inner Meta class.

InlineModelAdmin.can_delete¶: Specifies whether or not inline objects can be deleted in the inline. Defaults to True.

InlineModelAdmin.show_change_link¶: Specifies whether or not inline objects that can be changed in the admin have a link to the change form. Defaults to False.

InlineModelAdmin.get_formset(request, obj=None, **kwargs)¶: Returns a BaseInlineFormSet class for use in admin add/change views. See the example for ModelAdmin.get_formsets_with_inlines.

InlineModelAdmin.get_extra(request, obj=None, **kwargs)¶

Returns the number of extra inline forms to use. By default, returns the InlineModelAdmin.extra attribute.

Override this method to programmatically determine the number of extra inline forms. For example, this may be based on the model instance (passed as the keyword argument obj):

class BinaryTreeAdmin(admin.TabularInline):
    model = BinaryTree

    def get_extra(self, request, obj=None, **kwargs):
        extra = 2
        if obj:
            return extra - obj.binarytree_set.count()
        return extra

InlineModelAdmin.get_max_num(request, obj=None, **kwargs)¶

Returns the maximum number of extra inline forms to use. By default, returns the InlineModelAdmin.max_num attribute.

Override this method to programmatically determine the maximum number of inline forms. For example, this may be based on the model instance (passed as the keyword argument obj):

class BinaryTreeAdmin(admin.TabularInline):
    model = BinaryTree

    def get_max_num(self, request, obj=None, **kwargs):
        max_num = 10
        if obj and obj.parent:
            return max_num - 5
        return max_num

InlineModelAdmin.get_min_num(request, obj=None, **kwargs)¶

Returns the minimum number of inline forms to use. By default, returns the InlineModelAdmin.min_num attribute.

Override this method to programmatically determine the minimum number of inline forms. For example, this may be based on the model instance (passed as the keyword argument obj).

Working with a model with two or more foreign keys to the same parent model¶

It is sometimes possible to have more than one foreign key to the same model. Take this model for instance:

from django.db import models

class Friendship(models.Model):
    to_person = models.ForeignKey(Person, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name="friends")
    from_person = models.ForeignKey(Person, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name="from_friends")

If you wanted to display an inline on the Person admin add/change pages you need to explicitly define the foreign key since it is unable to do so automatically:

from django.contrib import admin
from myapp.models import Friendship

class FriendshipInline(admin.TabularInline):
    model = Friendship
    fk_name = "to_person"

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    inlines = [
        FriendshipInline,
    ]

Working with many-to-many models¶

By default, admin widgets for many-to-many relations will be displayed on whichever model contains the actual reference to the ManyToManyField. Depending on your ModelAdmin definition, each many-to-many field in your model will be represented by a standard HTML <select multiple>, a horizontal or vertical filter, or a raw_id_admin widget. However, it is also possible to replace these widgets with inlines.

Suppose we have the following models:

from django.db import models

class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=128)

class Group(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=128)
    members = models.ManyToManyField(Person, related_name='groups')

If you want to display many-to-many relations using an inline, you can do so by defining an InlineModelAdmin object for the relationship:

from django.contrib import admin

class MembershipInline(admin.TabularInline):
    model = Group.members.through

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    inlines = [
        MembershipInline,
    ]

class GroupAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    inlines = [
        MembershipInline,
    ]
    exclude = ('members',)

There are two features worth noting in this example.

Firstly - the MembershipInline class references Group.members.through. The through attribute is a reference to the model that manages the many-to-many relation. This model is automatically created by Django when you define a many-to-many field.

Secondly, the GroupAdmin must manually exclude the members field. Django displays an admin widget for a many-to-many field on the model that defines the relation (in this case, Group). If you want to use an inline model to represent the many-to-many relationship, you must tell Django’s admin to not display this widget - otherwise you will end up with two widgets on your admin page for managing the relation.

Note that when using this technique the m2m_changed signals aren’t triggered. This is because as far as the admin is concerned, through is just a model with two foreign key fields rather than a many-to-many relation.

In all other respects, the InlineModelAdmin is exactly the same as any other. You can customize the appearance using any of the normal ModelAdmin properties.

Working with many-to-many intermediary models¶

When you specify an intermediary model using the through argument to a ManyToManyField, the admin will not display a widget by default. This is because each instance of that intermediary model requires more information than could be displayed in a single widget, and the layout required for multiple widgets will vary depending on the intermediate model.

However, we still want to be able to edit that information inline. Fortunately, this is easy to do with inline admin models. Suppose we have the following models:

from django.db import models

class Person(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=128)

class Group(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=128)
    members = models.ManyToManyField(Person, through='Membership')

class Membership(models.Model):
    person = models.ForeignKey(Person, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    group = models.ForeignKey(Group, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    date_joined = models.DateField()
    invite_reason = models.CharField(max_length=64)

The first step in displaying this intermediate model in the admin is to define an inline class for the Membership model:

class MembershipInline(admin.TabularInline):
    model = Membership
    extra = 1

This simple example uses the default InlineModelAdmin values for the Membership model, and limits the extra add forms to one. This could be customized using any of the options available to InlineModelAdmin classes.

Now create admin views for the Person and Group models:

class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    inlines = (MembershipInline,)

class GroupAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    inlines = (MembershipInline,)

Finally, register your Person and Group models with the admin site:

admin.site.register(Person, PersonAdmin)
admin.site.register(Group, GroupAdmin)

Now your admin site is set up to edit Membership objects inline from either the Person or the Group detail pages.

Using generic relations as an inline¶

It is possible to use an inline with generically related objects. Let’s say you have the following models:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib.contenttypes.fields import GenericForeignKey

class Image(models.Model):
    image = models.ImageField(upload_to="images")
    content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
    content_object = GenericForeignKey("content_type", "object_id")

class Product(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)

If you want to allow editing and creating an Image instance on the Product, add/change views you can use GenericTabularInline or GenericStackedInline (both subclasses of GenericInlineModelAdmin) provided by admin. They implement tabular and stacked visual layouts for the forms representing the inline objects, respectively, just like their non-generic counterparts. They behave just like any other inline. In your admin.py for this example app:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.contenttypes.admin import GenericTabularInline

from myproject.myapp.models import Image, Product

class ImageInline(GenericTabularInline):
    model = Image

class ProductAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    inlines = [
        ImageInline,
    ]

admin.site.register(Product, ProductAdmin)

See the contenttypes documentation for more specific information.

Overriding admin templates¶

It is relatively easy to override many of the templates which the admin module uses to generate the various pages of an admin site. You can even override a few of these templates for a specific app, or a specific model.

Set up your projects admin template directories¶

The admin template files are located in the contrib/admin/templates/admin directory.

In order to override one or more of them, first create an admin directory in your project’s templates directory. This can be any of the directories you specified in the DIRS option of the DjangoTemplates backend in the TEMPLATES setting. If you have customized the 'loaders' option, be sure 'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader' appears before 'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader' so that your custom templates will be found by the template loading system before those that are included with django.contrib.admin.

Within this admin directory, create sub-directories named after your app. Within these app subdirectories create sub-directories named after your models. Note, that the admin app will lowercase the model name when looking for the directory, so make sure you name the directory in all lowercase if you are going to run your app on a case-sensitive filesystem.

To override an admin template for a specific app, copy and edit the template from the django/contrib/admin/templates/admin directory, and save it to one of the directories you just created.

For example, if we wanted to add a tool to the change list view for all the models in an app named my_app, we would copy contrib/admin/templates/admin/change_list.html to the templates/admin/my_app/ directory of our project, and make any necessary changes.

If we wanted to add a tool to the change list view for only a specific model named ‘Page’, we would copy that same file to the templates/admin/my_app/page directory of our project.

Overriding vs. replacing an admin template¶

Because of the modular design of the admin templates, it is usually neither necessary nor advisable to replace an entire template. It is almost always better to override only the section of the template which you need to change.

To continue the example above, we want to add a new link next to the History tool for the Page model. After looking at change_form.html we determine that we only need to override the object-tools-items block. Therefore here is our new change_form.html :

{% extends "admin/change_form.html" %}
{% load i18n admin_urls %}
{% block object-tools-items %}
    <li>
        <a href="{% url opts|admin_urlname:'history' original.pk|admin_urlquote %}" class="historylink">{% trans "History" %}</a>
    </li>
    <li>
        <a href="mylink/" class="historylink">My Link</a>
    </li>
    {% if has_absolute_url %}
        <li>
            <a href="{% url 'admin:view_on_site' content_type_id original.pk %}" class="viewsitelink">{% trans "View on site" %}</a>
        </li>
    {% endif %}
{% endblock %}

And that’s it! If we placed this file in the templates/admin/my_app directory, our link would appear on the change form for all models within my_app.

Templates which may be overridden per app or model¶

Not every template in contrib/admin/templates/admin may be overridden per app or per model. The following can:

app_index.html
change_form.html
change_list.html
delete_confirmation.html
object_history.html
popup_response.html

Changed in Django 1.11:

The ability to override the popup_response.html template was added.

For those templates that cannot be overridden in this way, you may still override them for your entire project. Just place the new version in your templates/admin directory. This is particularly useful to create custom 404 and 500 pages.

Note

Some of the admin templates, such as change_list_results.html are used to render custom inclusion tags. These may be overridden, but in such cases you are probably better off creating your own version of the tag in question and giving it a different name. That way you can use it selectively.

`AdminSite` objects¶

class AdminSite(name='admin')[source]¶

A Django administrative site is represented by an instance of django.contrib.admin.sites.AdminSite; by default, an instance of this class is created as django.contrib.admin.site and you can register your models and ModelAdmin instances with it.

When constructing an instance of an AdminSite, you can provide a unique instance name using the name argument to the constructor. This instance name is used to identify the instance, especially when reversing admin URLs. If no instance name is provided, a default instance name of admin will be used. See Customizing the AdminSite class for an example of customizing the AdminSite class.

`AdminSite` attributes¶

Templates can override or extend base admin templates as described in Overriding admin templates.

AdminSite.site_header¶: The text to put at the top of each admin page, as an <h1> (a string). By default, this is “Django administration”.

AdminSite.site_title¶: The text to put at the end of each admin page’s <title> (a string). By default, this is “Django site admin”.

AdminSite.site_url¶

The URL for the “View site” link at the top of each admin page. By default, site_url is /. Set it to None to remove the link.

For sites running on a subpath, the each_context() method checks if the current request has request.META['SCRIPT_NAME'] set and uses that value if site_url isn’t set to something other than /.

Changed in Django 1.10:

The SCRIPT_NAME support described in the previous paragraph was added.

AdminSite.index_title¶: The text to put at the top of the admin index page (a string). By default, this is “Site administration”.

AdminSite.index_template¶: Path to a custom template that will be used by the admin site main index view.

AdminSite.app_index_template¶: Path to a custom template that will be used by the admin site app index view.

AdminSite.empty_value_display¶: The string to use for displaying empty values in the admin site’s change list. Defaults to a dash. The value can also be overridden on a per ModelAdmin basis and on a custom field within a ModelAdmin by setting an empty_value_display attribute on the field. See ModelAdmin.empty_value_display for examples.

AdminSite.login_template¶: Path to a custom template that will be used by the admin site login view.

AdminSite.login_form¶: Subclass of AuthenticationForm that will be used by the admin site login view.

AdminSite.logout_template¶: Path to a custom template that will be used by the admin site logout view.

AdminSite.password_change_template¶: Path to a custom template that will be used by the admin site password change view.

AdminSite.password_change_done_template¶: Path to a custom template that will be used by the admin site password change done view.

`AdminSite` methods¶

AdminSite.each_context(request)[source]¶

Returns a dictionary of variables to put in the template context for every page in the admin site.

Includes the following variables and values by default:

site_header: AdminSite.site_header
site_title: AdminSite.site_title
site_url: AdminSite.site_url
has_permission: AdminSite.has_permission()
available_apps: a list of applications from the application registry available for the current user. Each entry in the list is a dict representing an application with the following keys:
- app_label: the application label
- app_url: the URL of the application index in the admin
- has_module_perms: a boolean indicating if displaying and accessing of the module’s index page is permitted for the current user
- models: a list of the models available in the application
Each model is a dict with the following keys:
- object_name: class name of the model
- name: plural name of the model
- perms: a dict tracking add, change, and delete permissions
- admin_url: admin changelist URL for the model
- add_url: admin URL to add a new model instance

AdminSite.has_permission(request)[source]¶: Returns True if the user for the given HttpRequest has permission to view at least one page in the admin site. Defaults to requiring both User.is_active and User.is_staff to be True.

AdminSite.register(model_or_iterable, admin_class=None, **options)[source]¶

Registers the given model class (or iterable of classes) with the given admin_class. admin_class defaults to ModelAdmin (the default admin options). If keyword arguments are given – e.g. list_display – they’ll be applied as options to the admin class.

Raises ImproperlyConfigured if a model is abstract. and django.contrib.admin.sites.AlreadyRegistered if a model is already registered.

Hooking `AdminSite` instances into your URLconf¶

The last step in setting up the Django admin is to hook your AdminSite instance into your URLconf. Do this by pointing a given URL at the AdminSite.urls method. It is not necessary to use include().

In this example, we register the default AdminSite instance django.contrib.admin.site at the URL /admin/

# urls.py
from django.conf.urls import url
from django.contrib import admin

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

Customizing the `AdminSite` class¶

If you’d like to set up your own admin site with custom behavior, you’re free to subclass AdminSite and override or add anything you like. Then, simply create an instance of your AdminSite subclass (the same way you’d instantiate any other Python class) and register your models and ModelAdmin subclasses with it instead of with the default site. Finally, update myproject/urls.py to reference your AdminSite subclass.

myapp/admin.py
from django.contrib.admin import AdminSite

from .models import MyModel

class MyAdminSite(AdminSite):
    site_header = 'Monty Python administration'

admin_site = MyAdminSite(name='myadmin')
admin_site.register(MyModel)

myproject/urls.py
from django.conf.urls import url

from myapp.admin import admin_site

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^myadmin/', admin_site.urls),
]

Note that you may not want autodiscovery of admin modules when using your own AdminSite instance since you will likely be importing all the per-app admin modules in your myproject.admin module. This means you need to put 'django.contrib.admin.apps.SimpleAdminConfig' instead of 'django.contrib.admin' in your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

Multiple admin sites in the same URLconf¶

It’s easy to create multiple instances of the admin site on the same Django-powered website. Just create multiple instances of AdminSite and root each one at a different URL.

In this example, the URLs /basic-admin/ and /advanced-admin/ feature separate versions of the admin site – using the AdminSite instances myproject.admin.basic_site and myproject.admin.advanced_site, respectively:

# urls.py
from django.conf.urls import url
from myproject.admin import basic_site, advanced_site

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^basic-admin/', basic_site.urls),
    url(r'^advanced-admin/', advanced_site.urls),
]

AdminSite instances take a single argument to their constructor, their name, which can be anything you like. This argument becomes the prefix to the URL names for the purposes of reversing them. This is only necessary if you are using more than one AdminSite.

Adding views to admin sites¶

Just like ModelAdmin, AdminSite provides a get_urls() method that can be overridden to define additional views for the site. To add a new view to your admin site, extend the base get_urls() method to include a pattern for your new view.

Note

Any view you render that uses the admin templates, or extends the base admin template, should set request.current_app before rendering the template. It should be set to either self.name if your view is on an AdminSite or self.admin_site.name if your view is on a ModelAdmin.

Adding a password reset feature¶

You can add a password reset feature to the admin site by adding a few lines to your URLconf. Specifically, add these four patterns:

from django.contrib.auth import views as auth_views

url(
    r'^admin/password_reset/$',
    auth_views.PasswordResetView.as_view(),
    name='admin_password_reset',
),
url(
    r'^admin/password_reset/done/$',
    auth_views.PasswordResetDoneView.as_view(),
    name='password_reset_done',
),
url(
    r'^reset/(?P<uidb64>[0-9A-Za-z_\-]+)/(?P<token>.+)/$',
    auth_views.PasswordResetConfirmView.as_view(),
    name='password_reset_confirm',
),
url(
    r'^reset/done/$',
    auth_views.PasswordResetCompleteView.as_view(),
    name='password_reset_complete',
),

(This assumes you’ve added the admin at admin/ and requires that you put the URLs starting with ^admin/ before the line that includes the admin app itself).

The presence of the admin_password_reset named URL will cause a “forgotten your password?” link to appear on the default admin log-in page under the password box.

`LogEntry` objects¶

class models.LogEntry¶: The LogEntry class tracks additions, changes, and deletions of objects done through the admin interface.

`LogEntry` attributes¶

LogEntry.action_time¶: The date and time of the action.

LogEntry.user¶: The user (an AUTH_USER_MODEL instance) who performed the action.

LogEntry.content_type¶: The ContentType of the modified object.

LogEntry.object_id¶: The textual representation of the modified object’s primary key.

LogEntry.object_repr¶: The object`s repr() after the modification.

LogEntry.action_flag¶

The type of action logged: ADDITION, CHANGE, DELETION.

For example, to get a list of all additions done through the admin:

from django.contrib.admin.models import LogEntry, ADDITION

LogEntry.objects.filter(action_flag=ADDITION)

LogEntry.change_message¶: The detailed description of the modification. In the case of an edit, for example, the message contains a list of the edited fields. The Django admin site formats this content as a JSON structure, so that get_change_message() can recompose a message translated in the current user language. Custom code might set this as a plain string though. You are advised to use the get_change_message() method to retrieve this value instead of accessing it directly.

Changed in Django 1.10:
Previously, this attribute was always a plain string. It is now JSON-structured so that the message can be translated in the current user language. Old messages are untouched.

`LogEntry` methods¶

LogEntry.get_edited_object()¶: A shortcut that returns the referenced object.

LogEntry.get_change_message()¶: New in Django 1.10.

Formats and translates change_message into the current user language. Messages created before Django 1.10 will always be displayed in the language in which they were logged.

Reversing admin URLs¶

When an AdminSite is deployed, the views provided by that site are accessible using Django’s URL reversing system.

The AdminSite provides the following named URL patterns:

Page	URL name	Parameters
Index	`index`
Login	`login`
Logout	`logout`
Password change	`password_change`
Password change done	`password_change_done`
i18n JavaScript	`jsi18n`
Application index page	`app_list`	`app_label`
Redirect to object’s page	`view_on_site`	`content_type_id`, `object_id`

Each ModelAdmin instance provides an additional set of named URLs:

Page	URL name	Parameters
Changelist	`{{ app_label }}_{{ model_name }}_changelist`
Add	`{{ app_label }}_{{ model_name }}_add`
History	`{{ app_label }}_{{ model_name }}_history`	`object_id`
Delete	`{{ app_label }}_{{ model_name }}_delete`	`object_id`
Change	`{{ app_label }}_{{ model_name }}_change`	`object_id`

The UserAdmin provides a named URL:

Page	URL name	Parameters
Password change	`auth_user_password_change`	`user_id`

These named URLs are registered with the application namespace admin, and with an instance namespace corresponding to the name of the Site instance.

So - if you wanted to get a reference to the Change view for a particular Choice object (from the polls application) in the default admin, you would call:

>>> from django.urls import reverse
>>> c = Choice.objects.get(...)
>>> change_url = reverse('admin:polls_choice_change', args=(c.id,))

This will find the first registered instance of the admin application (whatever the instance name), and resolve to the view for changing poll.Choice instances in that instance.

If you want to find a URL in a specific admin instance, provide the name of that instance as a current_app hint to the reverse call. For example, if you specifically wanted the admin view from the admin instance named custom, you would need to call:

>>> change_url = reverse('admin:polls_choice_change', args=(c.id,), current_app='custom')

For more details, see the documentation on reversing namespaced URLs.

To allow easier reversing of the admin urls in templates, Django provides an admin_urlname filter which takes an action as argument:

{% load admin_urls %}
<a href="{% url opts|admin_urlname:'add' %}">Add user</a>
<a href="{% url opts|admin_urlname:'delete' user.pk %}">Delete this user</a>

The action in the examples above match the last part of the URL names for ModelAdmin instances described above. The opts variable can be any object which has an app_label and model_name attributes and is usually supplied by the admin views for the current model.

The `staff_member_required` decorator¶

staff_member_required(redirect_field_name='next', login_url='admin:login')[source]¶

This decorator is used on the admin views that require authorization. A view decorated with this function will having the following behavior:

If the user is logged in, is a staff member (User.is_staff=True), and is active (User.is_active=True), execute the view normally.
Otherwise, the request will be redirected to the URL specified by the login_url parameter, with the originally requested path in a query string variable specified by redirect_field_name. For example: /admin/login/?next=/admin/polls/question/3/.

Example usage:

from django.contrib.admin.views.decorators import staff_member_required

@staff_member_required
def my_view(request):
    ...

Django 1.11.29 documentation

The Django admin site¶

Overview¶

Other topics¶

ModelAdmin objects¶

The register decorator¶

Discovery of admin files¶

ModelAdmin options¶

Custom template options¶

ModelAdmin methods¶

Other methods¶

ModelAdmin asset definitions¶

jQuery¶

Adding custom validation to the admin¶

InlineModelAdmin objects¶

InlineModelAdmin options¶

Working with a model with two or more foreign keys to the same parent model¶

Working with many-to-many models¶

Working with many-to-many intermediary models¶

Using generic relations as an inline¶

Overriding admin templates¶

Set up your projects admin template directories¶

Overriding vs. replacing an admin template¶

Templates which may be overridden per app or model¶

Root and login templates¶

AdminSite objects¶

AdminSite attributes¶

AdminSite methods¶

Hooking AdminSite instances into your URLconf¶

Customizing the AdminSite class¶

Multiple admin sites in the same URLconf¶

Adding views to admin sites¶

Adding a password reset feature¶

LogEntry objects¶

LogEntry attributes¶

LogEntry methods¶

Reversing admin URLs¶

The staff_member_required decorator¶

Last update:

`ModelAdmin` objects¶

The `register` decorator¶

`ModelAdmin` options¶

`ModelAdmin` methods¶

`ModelAdmin` asset definitions¶

`InlineModelAdmin` objects¶

`InlineModelAdmin` options¶

`AdminSite` objects¶

`AdminSite` attributes¶

`AdminSite` methods¶

Hooking `AdminSite` instances into your URLconf¶

Customizing the `AdminSite` class¶

`LogEntry` objects¶

`LogEntry` attributes¶

`LogEntry` methods¶

The `staff_member_required` decorator¶