Django Admin Autocomplete Filter

A simple Django app to render list filters in django admin using autocomplete widget. This app is heavily inspired from dal-admin-filters.

Overview:

Django comes preshipped with an admin panel which is a great utility to create quick CRUD's. The django 2.0 came with much needed autocomplete_fields which uses select2 widget that comes with a search feature that loads the options asynchronously. We can use this in django admin list filter.

Requirements:

Requires Django version >= 2.0

Installation:

You can install it via pip or to get the latest version clone this repo.

pip install django-admin-autocomplete-filter

Add admin_auto_filters to your INSTALLED_APPS inside settings.py of your project.

Usage:

Let's say we have following models:

from django.db import models

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

class Album(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=64)
    artist = models.ForeignKey(Artist, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    cover = models.CharField(max_length=256, null=True, default=None)

And you would like to filter results in Album Admin on the basis of artist, then you can define search fields in Artist and then define filter as:

from django.contrib import admin
from admin_auto_filters.filters import AutocompleteFilter


class ArtistFilter(AutocompleteFilter):
    title = 'Artist' # display title
    field_name = 'artist' # name of the foreign key field


class ArtistAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    search_fields = ['name'] # this is required for django's autocomplete functionality
    # ...


class AlbumAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = [ArtistFilter]
    
    """
        defining this class is required for AutocompleteFilter
        it's a bug and I am working on it.
    """
    class Media:
        pass
    
    # ...

After following these steps you may see the filter as:

Functionality to provide custom view for search:

Now you can also register your custom view instead of using django admin's search_results to control the results in the autocomplete. For this you will need to create your custom view and register the url in your admin class as shown below:

In your views.py:

from admin_auto_filters.views import AutocompleteJsonView


class CustomSearchView(AutocompleteJsonView):
    def get_queryset(self):
        """
           your custom logic goes here.
        """
        queryset = Artist.objects.all().order_by('name')
        return queryset

After this, register this view in your admin class as:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path


class AlbumAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = [ArtistFilter]

    class Media:
        pass
    
    def get_urls(self):
        urls = super().get_urls()
        custom_urls = [
            path('custom_search/', self.admin_site.admin_view(CustomSearchView.as_view(model_admin=self)),
                 name='custom_search'),
        ]
        return custom_urls + urls

Finally just tell the filter class to use this new view as:

from django.shortcuts import reverse
from admin_auto_filters.filters import AutocompleteFilter


class ArtistFilter(AutocompleteFilter):
    title = 'Artist'
    field_name = 'artist'

    def get_autocomplete_url(self, request, model_admin):
        return reverse('admin:custom_search')

Shortcut for creating filters:

It is now possible to use the AutocompleteFilterFactory shortcut to create filters on the fly, as shown below. Nested relations are supported, with no need to specify the model.

from django.contrib import admin
from admin_auto_filters.filters import AutocompleteFilterFactory


class AlbumAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = [
        AutocompleteFilterFactory('Artist', 'artist', 'admin:custom_search', True)
    ]

    def get_urls(self):
        """As above..."""

Customizing Widget Text

It is also possible to customize the text displayed in the filter widget, to use something other than str(obj). This needs to be configured for both the dropdown endpoint and the widget itself.

In your views.py, override display_text:

from admin_auto_filters.views import AutocompleteJsonView


class CustomSearchView(AutocompleteJsonView):

    @staticmethod
    def display_text(obj):
        return obj.my_str_method()

    def get_queryset(self):
        """As above..."""

Then use either of two options to customize the text. Option one is to specify the form_field in an AutocompleteFilter in your admin.py:

from django import forms
from django.contrib import admin
from django.shortcuts import reverse
from admin_auto_filters.filters import AutocompleteFilter


class FoodChoiceField(forms.ModelChoiceField):
    def label_from_instance(self, obj):
        return obj.my_str_method()


class ArtistFilter(AutocompleteFilter):
    title = 'Artist'
    field_name = 'artist'
    form_field = FoodChoiceField

    def get_autocomplete_url(self, request, model_admin):
        return reverse('admin:custom_search')


class AlbumAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = [ArtistFilter]

    def get_urls(self):
        """As above..."""

Or use option two. In an AutocompleteFilterFactory in your admin.py, add a label_by argument:

from django.contrib import admin
from admin_auto_filters.filters import AutocompleteFilterFactory


class AlbumAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = [
        AutocompleteFilterFactory('Artist', 'artist', 'admin:custom_search', True, label_by='my_str_method')
    ]

    def get_urls(self):
        """As above..."""

Contributing:

This project is a combined effort of a lot of selfless developers who try to make things easier. Your contribution is most welcome.

Please make a PR to the branch pre_release and make sure your branch does not have any conflicts and clearly mention the problems or improvements your PR is addressing.

License:

Django Admin Autocomplete Filter is an Open Source project licensed under the terms of the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.