Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Customizing the Django Admin: The How and the Why. Lakshman Prasad (twitter.com/becomingGuru) 

”one of the most powerful parts of Django” 

2008: Large percentage of people came to django because of admin. 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next ”Nothing on the web from five years ago is still awesome by today’s standards. Nothing.” – Jeff Croft 

No proper padding 

Not to use for external applications 

Hard to customize 

Not as good UX 

Doesn’t get enough love 

No content

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Software span a spectrum 

Those that unroll the loops for speed (at runtime!) 

... those that solve a complex human problem 

Frameworks come in between ... 

Admin is an idea that.. 

...achieves balance at higher abstraction 

... and helps reduce cost of maintainance and development 

... Web Applications themselves can be abstracted; not just code. 

... CRUD can be done better than by scaffolding. 

... Developers dont like to do UI. 

... UI interfaces can be standardised. 

... You can create an application by specification, with standard UI 

... Software development skillset is independent of UI development. 

... When you look with that perspective, shortcomings aren’t. 

... Always been much more popular outside of the US 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Import the model, override model admin, specify fields from . models import TransferEarnings from . forms import TransferEarningsForm from django . admin import ModelAdmin class TransferEarningsAdmin ( ModelAdmin ) : l i s t p e r p a g e = 15 s e a r c h f i e l d s = [ ’ u s e r l o g i n i d ’ ] l i s t d i s p l a y = ( ’ user ’ , ’ date ’ , ’ amount ’ , ’ t r a n s f e r t o ’ f i e l d s = ( ’ user ’ , ’ amount ’ , ’ date ’ , ’ t r a n s f e r t o ’ ) readonly = ( ’ user ’ , ’ amount ’ , ’ t r a n s f e r t o ’ , ’ date ’ ) form = TransferEarningsForm l i s t f i l t e r = [ ’ s t a t e ’ ] 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Auto discover the admin modules # u r l s . py from django . conf . u r l s import patterns , url , i n c l u d e from django . c o n t r i b import admin admin . a u t o d i s c o v e r () u r l p a t t e r n s = p a t t e r n s ( ’ ’ , ( r ’ ˆadmin/ ’ , i n c l u d e ( admin . s i t e . u r l s )) , ) 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next list filter enables filtering, Actions enable actions on models 

Custom Media can be added 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Customizations 

Provide values for the attributes defined in BaseModelAdmin. 

... And those defined in ModelAdmin 

So for AdminSite... all of these are documented pretty well 

Most things can be done dynamically. Per request. 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Custom class list filters c l a s s AdvancedDecadeBornListFilter ( django . c o n t r i b . admin . S i m p l e L i s t F i l t e r ) : def lookups ( s e l f , request , model admin ) : ””” Only show the lookups i f t h e r e a c t u a l l y i s anyone born i n the c o r r e s p o n d i n g decades . ””” qs = model admin . q u e r y s e t ( r e q u e s t ) i f qs . f i l t e r ( b i r t h d a y g t e=date (1980 , 1 , 1) , b i r t h d a y l t e=date (1989 , 12 , 3 1 ) ) . e x i s t s ( ) : y i e l d ( ’ 80 s ’ , ( ’ i n the e i g h t i e s ’ )) i f qs . f i l t e r ( b i r t h d a y g t e=date (1990 , 1 , 1) , b i r t h d a y l t e=date (1999 , 12 , 3 1 ) ) . e x i s t s ( ) : y i e l d ( ’ 90 s ’ , ( ’ i n the n i n e t i e s ’ )) def q u e r y s e t ( s e l f , request , q u e r y s e t ) : 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Custom admin actions class ArticleAdmin ( admin . ModelAdmin ) : . . . a c t i o n s = [ ’ make published ’ ] def make published ( s e l f , request , queryset ) : queryset . update ( s t a t u s=’p ’ ) make published . s h o r t d e s c r i p t i o n = \ ”Mark s e l e c t e d s t o r i e s as p u b l i s h e d ” 

Extend the ModelAdmin and inject context variables 

Templates are in contrib/admin/templates/admin/ 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Can be overriden per app/model in templates/admin/myapp/ app index . html change form . html c h a n g e l i s t . html d e l e t e c o n f i r m a t i o n . html o b j e c t h i s t o r y . html 

Override template at runtime 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next templates/admin/myapp/changeform.html {% extends ”admin/ change form . html ” %} {% load i18n %} {% block object−t o o l s %} {% i f change %}{% i f not is popup %} {% t r a n s ” H i s t o r y ” %} My Link {% i f h a s a b s o l u t e u r l %} {% t r a n s ”View on s i t e ” %} {% e n d i f%} {% e n d i f %}{% e n d i f %} {% endblock %} 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Custom media definitions class ArticleAdmin ( admin . ModelAdmin ) : class Media : css = { ” a l l ” : ( ” m y s t y l e s . css ” ,) } j s = ( ”my code . j s ” ,) 

One admin site per subdomain is easy! 

Multiple lists per same Model in different use cases 

Proxy models for aggregation of data values 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Row level permissions has add permission ( s e l f , request ) has change permission ( s e l f , request , obj=None ) h a s d e l e t e p e r m i s s i o n ( s e l f , request , obj=None ) 

App level, Site level permissions 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Explicitly add the other admin modules # u r l s . py from django . conf . u r l s import patterns , url , i n c l u d e from myproject . admin import b a s i c s i t e , a d v a n c e d s i t e u r l p a t t e r n s = p a t t e r n s ( ’ ’ , ( r ’ ˆ basic −admin/ ’ , i n c l u d e ( b a s i c s i t e . u r l s )) , ( r ’ ˆadvanced−admin/ ’ , i n c l u d e ( a d v a n c e d s i t e . u r l s )) , ) 

Instatiate Multiple Admin sites 

Add any external views to the admin 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next • Fieldsets • Filter Horizontal • Tabular/Stacked Inlines • Generic Inlines • Form field overrides • Date Hierarchy • Raw ID fields • ReadOnly fields • Admin Docs 

Plenty of third party packages 

Media/Template changes only 

Enables admin like functionality 

Extend the admin functionality (django-object-tools, autocomplete) 

Admin tools, django-suite 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Responsive web design 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Add more standardised views easily 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next Image Attributions http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos / h i n k e l s t o n e /2765597758 http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos /25521149@N03/2491915744 http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos /50764322@N04/8378057370 http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos /micahdowty /3866958782 http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos /81512202@N05/7468442446 http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos / marlenek /2051394370 http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos / t e j e d o r o d e l u z /3157690060/ http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos /23820645@N05/4287681570/ http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos / a i d a n j o n e s /3575000735/ http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos /go /253819/ http ://www. f l i c k r . com/ photos / o r i n r o b e r t j o h n /114430223/ 

Admin Issues Setting Perspective Overview Customizations External apps Admin Next About Me • Active Djangonaut and active in Python world • Part of a few popular open source django applications github.com/becomingGuru, stackoverflow.com/users/55562 • Co-Authored an ebook ”django-design-patterns” • Architect and develop full stack applications at Mckinsey • Earlier, Consulting and Development via Agiliq Solutions • Developed several custom proprietory django applications • twitter.com/becomingGuru 

@becomingGuru, [email protected]