Django Admin: Using a custom widget for only one model field

Question

I have a DateTimeField field in my model. I wanted to display it as a checkbox widget in the Django admin site. To do this, I created a custom form widget. However, I do not know how to use my custom widget for only this one field.

The Django documentation explains how to use a custom widget for all fields of a certain type:

class StopAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    formfield_overrides = {
        models.DateTimeField: {'widget': ApproveStopWidget }
    }

This is not granular enough though. I want to change it for only one field.

There is a clearer solution, using the Meta attribute, here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/10293970 — Manel Clos, Jan 29 '13 at 12:46

score 139 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 20 '22 at 08:01

139

Create a custom ModelForm for your ModelAdmin and add 'widgets' to its Meta class, like so:

class StopAdminForm(forms.ModelForm):
  class Meta:
    model = Stop
    widgets = {
      'field_name': ApproveStopWidget(),
    }
    fields = '__all__'

class StopAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
  form = StopAdminForm

Done!

Documentation for this is sort of non-intuitively placed in the ModelForm docs, without any mention to it given in the admin docs. See: Creating forms from models

edited Aug 20 '22 at 08:01

coredumperror

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answered Mar 10 '11 at 17:42

Chris Pratt

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Unfortunately this only seems to work for the main "edit" page, and not on the list display, whereas `formfield_overrides` works for both. – Mechanical snail Sep 12 '12 at 02:40
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And that warranted a downvote? Please take a moment to read "Vote Down" privilege description: http://stackoverflow.com/privileges/vote-down. I'm pretty positive my answer doesn't qualify as "an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect". – Chris Pratt Sep 12 '12 at 16:15
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There's a range of opinions: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112664/146243, http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/46590/146243, http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/46596/146243. – Mechanical snail Sep 13 '12 at 00:20
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Starting with Django 1.8 you should add `fields = '__all__'` to `Meta`. Vide http://stackoverflow.com/a/28306347/1161025. – maciek Mar 25 '15 at 08:27
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... and `approve_ts` means what? then repeated in next answers. There is no such thing in Django source, either in topic's question. – Sławomir Lenart Apr 26 '17 at 18:21
I updated `approve_ts` to `field_name` . Seems to have been a copy-paste that didn't get genericised. – coredumperror Aug 20 '22 at 08:02

score 36 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 16 '10 at 02:09

After digging into the admin, model field and form field code, I believe the only way to carry out what I want is by creating a custom model field:

`models.py`

from django.db import models
from widgets import ApproveStopWidget

class ApproveStopModelField(models.DateTimeField):
    pass

class Stop(models.model):
    # Other fields
    approve_ts = ApproveStopModelField('Approve place', null=True, blank=True)

`admin.py`

from widgets import ApproveStopWidget
from models import ApproveStopModelField

class StopAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    formfield_overrides = {
        ApproveStopModelField: {'widget': ApproveStopWidget }
    }

It gets the job done.

For the time being, I'll leave the question unanswered because I have the habit of missing the obvious. Perhaps some Django smartypants has a better solution.

For those wondering how to integrate this with South, the line you would need for this example is: `from south.modelsinspector import add_introspection_rule add_introspection_rules([], ["^appname\.models\.ApproveStopModelField"])` — yar, Oct 19 '12 at 01:00

score 28 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 03 '19 at 21:57

28

Override formfield_for_dbfield like thus:

class VehicleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    search_fields = ["name", "colour"]

    def formfield_for_dbfield(self, db_field, **kwargs):
        if db_field.name == 'colour':
            kwargs['widget'] = ColourChooserWidget
        return super(VehicleAdmin, self).formfield_for_dbfield(db_field,**kwargs)

(credit to http://www.kryogenix.org/days/2008/03/28/overriding-a-single-field-in-the-django-admin-using-newforms-admin/ )

edited Oct 03 '19 at 21:57

Oli

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answered Jun 07 '16 at 10:34

Andy Baker

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Nice. Adding a custom `ModelForm` for changing just a widget of one field seems like an overkill to me. – alekosot Sep 20 '16 at 08:59
Just tried this in Django 1.11.5 and it worked perfectly. My model has multiple TextFields and in the Admin change form I needed some to be regular elements and others to be TinyMCE rich text editors to accept HTML instead of plain text. The all or nothing 'formfield_overrides' wasn't useful in this scenario. – Stephen Blair Dec 06 '17 at 11:45

score 7 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 10 '20 at 22:40

Django's ModelAdmin.get_changelist_form(self, request, **kwargs) will do the trick for the case of list_editable

class StopAdminForm(forms.ModelForm):
  class Meta:
    model = Stop
    widgets = {
      'approve_ts': ApproveStopWidget(),
    }

class StopAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
  form = StopAdminForm

  #just return the ModelForm class StopAdminForm
  def get_changelist_form(self, request, **kwargs):
        return StopAdminForm

Refer to Django Official documentation on this topic

I hope this will help

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 16 '22 at 15:15

You can change the widget for only one field by assigning your widget to a field in a custom form and assigning the custom form to an admin as shown below:

# "admin.py"

class ProductForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Product
        widgets = {
          'price': PriceWidget(),
        }
        fields = '__all__'

@admin.register(Product)
class ProductAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    form = ProductForm

Django Admin: Using a custom widget for only one model field

5 Answers5

`models.py`

`admin.py`

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