django: Customise the admin form for models

Customising the admin form can be a bit tricky as the documentation is a bit scarce on that issue.

What I needed to do was add a checkbox which renews the object to the current timestamp.

However, the checkbox is not part of the model, and won't show up unless you specify a custom form. To specify a custom form, fill in the ModelAdmin.form attribute.

Upon saving, we override ModelAdmin.save_model() so it knows how to use the data from the new field elements.

Below is the working source for a customised form.

view sourceprint?

01.import datetime

02. 

03.from django import forms

04.from django.contrib import admin

05. 

06.class JobForm(forms.ModelForm):

07.  renew = forms.BooleanField(label = 'Renew post')

08. 

09.  class Meta:

10.    model = Job

11. 

12.class JobAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

13.  form = JobForm

14. 

15.  def save_model(self, request, obj, form, change):

16.    if change and form.cleaned_data['renew']:

17.      obj.published = datetime.datetime.now()

18. 

19.    return super(JobAdmin, self).save_model(request, obj, form, change)

20. 

21.admin.site.register(Job, JobAdmin)

And there you have it!