Django AdminForm field default value

Question

I have a Django admin form. And now I want to fill it's initial field with data based on my model. So I tried this:

class OrderForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Order

    email = CharField(initial="null", widget=Textarea(attrs={'rows': 30, 'cols': 100}))

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):

        self.request = kwargs.pop('request', None)

        products = kwargs['instance'].products.all()

        self.message = purchase_message % (
            "".join(["<li>" + p.name + ": " + str(p.price) + "</li>" for p in products]),
            reduce(lambda x, y:x + y.price, products, 0)
        )

        # and here I have a message in self.message variable

        super(OrderForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

At this point i don't know how to access email field to set it's initial value before widget is rendered. How can i do this?

score 76 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 29 '13 at 20:10

Assuming the value is based on 'request' you should use this:

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def get_form(self, request, obj=None, **kwargs):
        form = super(MyModelAdmin, self).get_form(request, obj, **kwargs)
        form.base_fields['my_field_name'].initial = 'abcd'
        return form

Wtower · Answer 2 · 2017-05-11T10:09:11.460

47

Since Django 1.7 there is a function get_changeform_initial_data in ModelAdmin that sets initial form values:

def get_changeform_initial_data(self, request):
    return {'name': 'custom_initial_value'}

EDIT: Apart from that, @Paul Kenjora's answer applies anyway, which might be useful if you already override get_form.

In case of inline (InlineModelAdmin) there is no get_changeform_initial_data. You can override get_formset and set formset.form.base_fields['my_field_name'].initial.

edited May 11 '17 at 10:09

answered Nov 11 '15 at 10:39

Wtower

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It doesn't work if you are using a custom form class for the model admin – Ozgur Vatansever Dec 26 '16 at 15:13
@ozgur naturally. If you use a custom form class then just use `get_form` as recommended in another answer. If not though, there is absolutely no reason to do so. – Wtower Dec 26 '16 at 17:04
other answer doesn't work too if the field you are providing an initial value is excluded via `exclude` property because `base_fields` doesn't include excluded fields. – Ozgur Vatansever Dec 26 '16 at 17:38
2

thanks, this helped me. so many other posts have way more complicated ways of doing this. – FistOfFury Sep 20 '17 at 02:55
1

Note that `get_changeform_initial_data()` is only called when adding new objects, not when changing existing ones. See [source](https://github.com/django/django/blob/stable/3.2.x/django/contrib/admin/options.py#L1599) (Django 3.2). – djvg Jun 22 '21 at 07:39
1

Thank you for mentioning what to do in case of inline, I have been searching about it for a while – Mahmoud Adel Oct 03 '22 at 13:02

Timmy O'Mahony · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-29T11:48:54.250

I'm not too sure what you need to set email to, but You can set the initial values in lots of different places.

Your function def init() isn't indented correctly which i guess is a typo? Also, why are you specifically giving the email form field a TextInput? It already renders this widget by default

You can set the email's initial value in your form's initialized (def __ init __(self))

(self.fields['email'].widget).initial_value = "something"

or in the model.py

email = models.CharField(default="something")

or as you have in forms.py

email = models.CharField(initial="something")

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 18 '12 at 20:19

I needed the first solution of pastylegs since the other ones overwrite the whole Widget including, for example, the help text. However, it didn't work for me as he posted it. Instead, I had to do this:

self.fields['email'].initial = 'something'

In my case, I was trying to do a personalized auto-increment(based on current data and not a simple default) in a field of a django admin form.

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 04 '18 at 09:56

4

This code is worked for me (Django 1.11):

from django import forms

class MyAdminForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.initial['field_name'] = 'initial_value'

answered Apr 04 '18 at 09:56

valex

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Django AdminForm field default value

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