===================== The Django admin site ===================== One of the most powerful parts of Django is the automatic admin interface. It reads metadata in your model to provide a powerful and production-ready interface that content producers can immediately use to start adding content to the site. In this document, we discuss how to activate, use and customize Django's admin interface. .. admonition:: Note The admin site has been refactored significantly since Django 0.96. This document describes the newest version of the admin site, which allows for much richer customization. If you follow the development of Django itself, you may have heard this described as "newforms-admin." Overview ======== There are five steps in activating the Django admin site: 1. Add ``django.contrib.admin`` to your ``INSTALLED_APPS`` setting. 2. Determine which of your application's models should be editable in the admin interface. 3. For each of those models, optionally create a ``ModelAdmin`` class that encapsulates the customized admin functionality and options for that particular model. 4. Instantiate an ``AdminSite`` and tell it about each of your models and ``ModelAdmin`` classes. 5. Hook the ``AdminSite`` instance into your URLconf. ``ModelAdmin`` objects ====================== The ``ModelAdmin`` class is the representation of a model in the admin interface. These are stored in a file named ``admin.py`` in your application. Let's take a look at a very simple example the ``ModelAdmin``:: from django.contrib import admin from myproject.myapp.models import Author class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin): pass admin.site.register(Author, AuthorAdmin) ``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:: class AuthorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin): date_hierarchy = 'pub_date' ``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' ``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. For an example see the section `Adding custom validation to the admin`_. ``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 ``
`` on the admin form page. (A ``
`` 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.FlatPage`` model:: class FlatPageAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin): fieldsets = ( (None, { 'fields': ('url', 'title', 'content', 'sites') }), ('Advanced options', { 'classes': ('collapse',), 'fields': ('enable_comments', 'registration_required', 'template_name') }), ) This results in an admin page that looks like: .. image:: http://media.djangoproject.com/img/doc/flatfiles_admin.png If ``fieldsets`` isn't given, 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'), } 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'), } ``classes`` A list 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. 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. ``fields`` ~~~~~~~~~~ Use this option as an alternative to ``fieldsets`` if the layout does not matter and if you want to only show a subset of the available fields in the form. For example, you could define a simpler version of the admin form for the ``django.contrib.flatpages.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, sequencially, in the form. .. admonition:: Note This ``fields`` option should not be confused with the ``fields`` dictionary key that is within the ``fieldsets`` option, as described in the previous section. ``filter_horizontal`` ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Use a nifty unobtrusive JavaScript "filter" interface instead of the usability-challenged ``) 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. ``raw_id_fields`` ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By default, Django's admin uses a select-box interface () 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 a ``Input`` widget for either a ``ForeignKey`` or ``ManyToManyField``:: class BookInline(admin.TabularInline): model = Book raw_id_fields = ("pages",) ``template`` ~~~~~~~~~~~~ The template used to render the inline on the page. ``verbose_name`` ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An override to the ``verbose_name`` found in the model's inner ``Meta`` class. ``verbose_name_plural`` ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An override to the ``verbose_name_plural`` found in the model's inner ``Meta`` class. 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:: class Friendship(models.Model): to_person = models.ForeignKey(Person, related_name="friends") from_person = models.ForeignKey(Person, 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:: class FriendshipInline(admin.TabularInline): model = Friendship fk_name = "to_person" class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin): inlines = [ FriendshipInline, ] Working with Many-to-Many Intermediary Models ---------------------------------------------- By default, admin widgets for many-to-many relations will be displayed inline on whichever model contains the actual reference to the ``ManyToManyField``. However, 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:: 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) group = models.ForeignKey(Group) 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:: class Image(models.Model): image = models.ImageField(upload_to="images") content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType) object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField() content_object = generic.GenericForeignKey("content_type", "object_id") class Product(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=100) If you want to allow editing and creating ``Image`` instance on the ``Product`` add/change views you can simply use ``GenericInlineModelAdmin`` provided by ``django.contrib.contenttypes.generic``. In your ``admin.py`` for this example app:: from django.contrib import admin from django.contrib.contenttypes import generic from myproject.myapp.models import Image, Product class ImageInline(generic.GenericTabularInline): model = Image class ProductAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin): inlines = [ ImageInline, ] admin.site.register(Product, ProductAdmin) ``django.contrib.contenttypes.generic`` provides both a ``GenericTabularInline`` and ``GenericStackedInline`` and behave just like any other inline. See the `contenttypes documentation`_ for more specific information. .. _contenttypes documentation: ../contenttypes/ ``AdminSite`` objects ===================== 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.root`` method. In this example, we register the default ``AdminSite`` instance ``django.contrib.admin.site`` at the URL ``/admin/`` :: # urls.py from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.contrib import admin admin.autodiscover() urlpatterns = patterns('', ('^admin/(.*)', admin.site.root), ) Above we used ``admin.autodiscover()`` to automatically load the ``INSTALLED_APPS`` admin.py modules. In this example, we register the ``AdminSite`` instance ``myproject.admin.admin_site`` at the URL ``/myadmin/`` :: # urls.py from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from myproject.admin import admin_site urlpatterns = patterns('', ('^myadmin/(.*)', admin_site.root), ) There is really no need to use autodiscover when using your own ``AdminSite`` instance since you will likely be importing all the per-app admin.py modules in your ``myproject.admin`` module. Note that the regular expression in the URLpattern *must* group everything in the URL that comes after the URL root -- hence the ``(.*)`` in these examples. Multiple admin sites in the same URLconf ---------------------------------------- It's easy to create multiple instances of the admin site on the same Django-powered Web site. 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.defaults import * from myproject.admin import basic_site, advanced_site urlpatterns = patterns('', ('^basic-admin/(.*)', basic_site.root), ('^advanced-admin/(.*)', advanced_site.root), )