Django's admin supports a lot of customization. However, the current implementation relies on the use of class values and methods, requiring a lot of code duplication. This project contains classes, mixins, and a few templates that improve the usability and maintainability of Django's admin, and implement some missing features.

ModelAdmin mixins:

• ReadonlyModelAdmin - Removes all editability from the ModelAdmin.

• CSVModelAdmin - Adds a changelist action to export the selected records as a CSV.

• FormatterModelAdmin - Allows the use of admin field formatters.

• BetterRawIdFieldsModelAdmin - Adapted from a Django Snippet <http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/2217/>_, this formats all raw id fields with a convenient link to that record's corresponding admin change page.

Field formatters:

If you want to format a monetary dollar value with a dollar sign and commas, you have to implement a myvariable_dollars() method in your ModelAdmin class that returns the desired string, and then list this method in the ModelAdmin's readonly_fields list.

In many non-trivial applications, I found myself writing a huge number of these functions, most of which were nearly identical. So I decided to abstract this functionality into a number of classes that could be instantiated and easily plugged into a ModelAdmin.

Pre-built formatters include:

• DollarFormat

• PercentFormat

• CenterFormat

• NbspFormat

• BooleanFormat

• ForeignKeyLink

• OneToManyLink

Formatters are used by wrapping them around field names in a ModelAdmin. Say you have a model with a field called income that you want to display in admin formatted with a dollar sign. Normally, you'd do something like this:

class BudgetAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

    fields = (
        'id',
        'name',
        'income_str',
    )
    
    readonly_fields = (
        'income_str',
    )
    
    def income_str(self, request, obj=None):
        if obj is None:
            return
        return '$%.2f' % obj.income

Formatters simply this process. In this example, you could use the DollarFormat class to accomplish the same thing with much less code:

from admin_steroids import FormatterModelAdmin
from admin_steroids.formatters import DollarFormat

class BudgetAdmin(FormatterModelAdmin):

    fields = (
        'id',
        'name',
        DollarFormat('income', decimals=2),
    )

Ajax list filters:

Django's default admin list filters don't allow selecting multiple values for a field, nor do they handle fields with large numbers of values. Fields render all values in a list or select drop-down, slowing down page load and wasting screen space.

I've implemented a custom AjaxFieldFilter which allows you to search for one or more values via an Ajax-powered search bar, so admin still renders quickly while the user is still able to search for any value used by the field.

In your admin, add the AjaxFieldFilter like:

from django.contrib import admin
from admin_steroids.filters import AjaxFieldFilter
import models

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

    list_filters = (
        ('myfield', AjaxFieldFilter),
    )
    
admin.site.register(models.MyModel, MyModelAdmin)

Then, in your settings.py, add 'admin_steroids' to your INSTALLED_APPS, and flag your field as safe to search:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...,
    'admin_steroids',
]

DAS_ALLOWED_AJAX_SEARCH_PATHS = [
    ('myapp', 'mymodel', 'myfield'),
]

DAS_AJAX_SEARCH_PATH_FIELDS = {
    # This assumed "myfield" a ForeignKey, pointing to a model that has
    # a "name" and "slug" field you want to search.
    # If "myfield" is a simple CharField, you don't need to specify
    # anything here.
    ('myapp', 'mymodel', 'myfield'): ('name', 'slug'),
}

Finally, add admin_steroids to your urls.py to expose the Ajax search URLs, which by default will be rendered in the form /admin/<app>/<model>/field/<field>/search:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ...

    # Should go before the actual admin, so it won't be overridden.
    (r'^admin/', include('admin_steroids.urls')),
    
    (r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
    
    ...
)

You can override these URLs by excluding the URL include above and specifying your own pattern pointing to admin_steroids.views.ModelFieldSearchView.

See admin_steroids.urls for an example.

Install the package via pip with:

pip install django-admin-steroids

Tests require the Python development headers to be installed, which you can install on Ubuntu with:

sudo apt-get install python-dev python3-dev python3.4-dev

To run unittests across multiple Python versions, install:

sudo apt-get install python3.4-minimal python3.4-dev python3.5-minimal python3.5-dev

To run all tests:

export TESTNAME=; tox

To run tests for a specific environment (e.g. Python 2.7 with Django 1.4):

export TESTNAME=; tox -e py27-django15

To run a specific test:

export TESTNAME=.testName; tox -e py27-django15