<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>Writing your first Django app, part 2 — Django 1.4.21 documentation</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../_static/default.css" type="text/css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../_static/pygments.css" type="text/css" /> <script type="text/javascript"> var DOCUMENTATION_OPTIONS = { URL_ROOT: '../', VERSION: '1.4.21', COLLAPSE_INDEX: false, FILE_SUFFIX: '.html', HAS_SOURCE: true }; </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/underscore.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/doctools.js"></script> <link rel="top" title="Django 1.4.21 documentation" href="../index.html" /> <link rel="up" title="Getting started" href="index.html" /> <link rel="next" title="Writing your first Django app, part 3" href="tutorial03.html" /> <link rel="prev" title="Writing your first Django app, part 1" href="tutorial01.html" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="../templatebuiltins.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> (function($) { if (!django_template_builtins) { // templatebuiltins.js missing, do nothing. return; } $(document).ready(function() { // Hyperlink Django template tags and filters var base = "../ref/templates/builtins.html"; if (base == "#") { // Special case for builtins.html itself base = ""; } // Tags are keywords, class '.k' $("div.highlight\\-html\\+django span.k").each(function(i, elem) { var tagname = $(elem).text(); if ($.inArray(tagname, django_template_builtins.ttags) != -1) { var fragment = tagname.replace(/_/, '-'); $(elem).html("<a href='" + base + "#" + fragment + "'>" + tagname + "</a>"); } }); // Filters are functions, class '.nf' $("div.highlight\\-html\\+django span.nf").each(function(i, elem) { var filtername = $(elem).text(); if ($.inArray(filtername, django_template_builtins.tfilters) != -1) { var fragment = filtername.replace(/_/, '-'); $(elem).html("<a href='" + base + "#" + fragment + "'>" + filtername + "</a>"); } }); }); })(jQuery); </script> </head> <body> <div class="document"> <div id="custom-doc" class="yui-t6"> <div id="hd"> <h1><a href="../index.html">Django 1.4.21 documentation</a></h1> <div id="global-nav"> <a title="Home page" href="../index.html">Home</a> | <a title="Table of contents" href="../contents.html">Table of contents</a> | <a title="Global index" href="../genindex.html">Index</a> | <a title="Module index" href="../py-modindex.html">Modules</a> </div> <div class="nav"> « <a href="tutorial01.html" title="Writing your first Django app, part 1">previous</a> | <a href="index.html" title="Getting started" accesskey="U">up</a> | <a href="tutorial03.html" title="Writing your first Django app, part 3">next</a> »</div> </div> <div id="bd"> <div id="yui-main"> <div class="yui-b"> <div class="yui-g" id="intro-tutorial02"> <div class="section" id="s-writing-your-first-django-app-part-2"> <span id="writing-your-first-django-app-part-2"></span><h1>Writing your first Django app, part 2<a class="headerlink" href="#writing-your-first-django-app-part-2" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1> <p>This tutorial begins where <a class="reference internal" href="tutorial01.html"><em>Tutorial 1</em></a> left off. We’re continuing the Web-poll application and will focus on Django’s automatically-generated admin site.</p> <div class="admonition-philosophy admonition"> <p class="first admonition-title">Philosophy</p> <p>Generating admin sites for your staff or clients to add, change and delete content is tedious work that doesn’t require much creativity. For that reason, Django entirely automates creation of admin interfaces for models.</p> <p>Django was written in a newsroom environment, with a very clear separation between “content publishers” and the “public” site. Site managers use the system to add news stories, events, sports scores, etc., and that content is displayed on the public site. Django solves the problem of creating a unified interface for site administrators to edit content.</p> <p class="last">The admin isn’t intended to be used by site visitors. It’s for site managers.</p> </div> <div class="section" id="s-activate-the-admin-site"> <span id="activate-the-admin-site"></span><h2>Activate the admin site<a class="headerlink" href="#activate-the-admin-site" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>The Django admin site is not activated by default – it’s an opt-in thing. To activate the admin site for your installation, do these three things:</p> <ul> <li><p class="first">Uncomment <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">"django.contrib.admin"</span></tt> in the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-INSTALLED_APPS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">INSTALLED_APPS</span></tt></a> setting.</p> </li> <li><p class="first">Run <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">python</span> <span class="pre">manage.py</span> <span class="pre">syncdb</span></tt>. Since you have added a new application to <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-INSTALLED_APPS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">INSTALLED_APPS</span></tt></a>, the database tables need to be updated.</p> </li> <li><p class="first">Edit your <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">mysite/urls.py</span></tt> file and uncomment the lines that reference the admin – there are three lines in total to uncomment. This file is a URLconf; we’ll dig into URLconfs in the next tutorial. For now, all you need to know is that it maps URL roots to applications. In the end, you should have a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">urls.py</span></tt> file that looks like this:</p> <pre class="literal-block"> from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url # Uncomment the next two lines to enable the admin: <strong>from django.contrib import admin</strong> <strong>admin.autodiscover()</strong> urlpatterns = patterns('', # Examples: # url(r'^$', '{{ project_name }}.views.home', name='home'), # url(r'^{{ project_name }}/', include('{{ project_name }}.foo.urls')), # Uncomment the admin/doc line below to enable admin documentation: # url(r'^admin/doc/', include('django.contrib.admindocs.urls')), # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin: <strong>url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),</strong> ) </pre> <p>(The bold lines are the ones that needed to be uncommented.)</p> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="section" id="s-start-the-development-server"> <span id="start-the-development-server"></span><h2>Start the development server<a class="headerlink" href="#start-the-development-server" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>Let’s start the development server and explore the admin site.</p> <p>Recall from Tutorial 1 that you start the development server like so:</p> <div class="highlight-bash"><div class="highlight"><pre>python manage.py runserver </pre></div> </div> <p>Now, open a Web browser and go to “/admin/” on your local domain – e.g., <a class="reference external" href="http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/">http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/</a>. You should see the admin’s login screen:</p> <img alt="Django admin login screen" src="../_images/admin01.png" /> <div class="admonition-doesn-t-match-what-you-see admonition"> <p class="first admonition-title">Doesn’t match what you see?</p> <p>If at this point, instead of the above login page, you get an error page reporting something like:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><pre>ImportError at /admin/ cannot import name patterns ...</pre> </div> <p class="last">then you’re probably using a version of Django that doesn’t match this tutorial version. You’ll want to either switch to the older tutorial or the newer Django version.</p> </div> </div> <div class="section" id="s-enter-the-admin-site"> <span id="enter-the-admin-site"></span><h2>Enter the admin site<a class="headerlink" href="#enter-the-admin-site" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>Now, try logging in. (You created a superuser account in the first part of this tutorial, remember? If you didn’t create one or forgot the password you can <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/auth.html#topics-auth-creating-superusers"><em>create another one</em></a>.) You should see the Django admin index page:</p> <img alt="Django admin index page" src="../_images/admin02t.png" /> <p>You should see a few types of editable content, including groups, users and sites. These are core features Django ships with by default.</p> </div> <div class="section" id="s-make-the-poll-app-modifiable-in-the-admin"> <span id="make-the-poll-app-modifiable-in-the-admin"></span><h2>Make the poll app modifiable in the admin<a class="headerlink" href="#make-the-poll-app-modifiable-in-the-admin" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>But where’s our poll app? It’s not displayed on the admin index page.</p> <p>Just one thing to do: We need to tell the admin that <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Poll</span></tt> objects have an admin interface. To do this, create a file called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin.py</span></tt> in your <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls</span></tt> directory, and edit it to look like this:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Poll</span> <span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.contrib</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">admin</span> <span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Poll</span><span class="p">)</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>You’ll need to restart the development server to see your changes. Normally, the server auto-reloads code every time you modify a file, but the action of creating a new file doesn’t trigger the auto-reloading logic.</p> </div> <div class="section" id="s-explore-the-free-admin-functionality"> <span id="explore-the-free-admin-functionality"></span><h2>Explore the free admin functionality<a class="headerlink" href="#explore-the-free-admin-functionality" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>Now that we’ve registered <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Poll</span></tt>, Django knows that it should be displayed on the admin index page:</p> <img alt="Django admin index page, now with polls displayed" src="../_images/admin03t.png" /> <p>Click “Polls.” Now you’re at the “change list” page for polls. This page displays all the polls in the database and lets you choose one to change it. There’s the “What’s up?” poll we created in the first tutorial:</p> <img alt="Polls change list page" src="../_images/admin04t.png" /> <p>Click the “What’s up?” poll to edit it:</p> <img alt="Editing form for poll object" src="../_images/admin05t.png" /> <p>Things to note here:</p> <ul class="simple"> <li>The form is automatically generated from the Poll model.</li> <li>The different model field types (<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/fields.html#django.db.models.DateTimeField" title="django.db.models.DateTimeField"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">DateTimeField</span></tt></a>, <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/fields.html#django.db.models.CharField" title="django.db.models.CharField"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">CharField</span></tt></a>) correspond to the appropriate HTML input widget. Each type of field knows how to display itself in the Django admin.</li> <li>Each <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/fields.html#django.db.models.DateTimeField" title="django.db.models.DateTimeField"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">DateTimeField</span></tt></a> gets free JavaScript shortcuts. Dates get a “Today” shortcut and calendar popup, and times get a “Now” shortcut and a convenient popup that lists commonly entered times.</li> </ul> <p>The bottom part of the page gives you a couple of options:</p> <ul class="simple"> <li>Save – Saves changes and returns to the change-list page for this type of object.</li> <li>Save and continue editing – Saves changes and reloads the admin page for this object.</li> <li>Save and add another – Saves changes and loads a new, blank form for this type of object.</li> <li>Delete – Displays a delete confirmation page.</li> </ul> <p>If the value of “Date published” doesn’t match the time when you created the poll in Tutorial 1, it probably means you forgot to set the correct value for the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TIME_ZONE"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TIME_ZONE</span></tt></a> setting. Change it, reload the page and check that the correct value appears.</p> <p>Change the “Date published” by clicking the “Today” and “Now” shortcuts. Then click “Save and continue editing.” Then click “History” in the upper right. You’ll see a page listing all changes made to this object via the Django admin, with the timestamp and username of the person who made the change:</p> <img alt="History page for poll object" src="../_images/admin06t.png" /> </div> <div class="section" id="s-customize-the-admin-form"> <span id="customize-the-admin-form"></span><h2>Customize the admin form<a class="headerlink" href="#customize-the-admin-form" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>Take a few minutes to marvel at all the code you didn’t have to write. By registering the Poll model with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin.site.register(Poll)</span></tt>, Django was able to construct a default form representation. Often, you’ll want to customize how the admin form looks and works. You’ll do this by telling Django the options you want when you register the object.</p> <p>Let’s see how this works by re-ordering the fields on the edit form. Replace the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin.site.register(Poll)</span></tt> line with:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">PollAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="n">fields</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'pub_date'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'question'</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Poll</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">PollAdmin</span><span class="p">)</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>You’ll follow this pattern – create a model admin object, then pass it as the second argument to <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin.site.register()</span></tt> – any time you need to change the admin options for an object.</p> <p>This particular change above makes the “Publication date” come before the “Question” field:</p> <img alt="Fields have been reordered" src="../_images/admin07.png" /> <p>This isn’t impressive with only two fields, but for admin forms with dozens of fields, choosing an intuitive order is an important usability detail.</p> <p>And speaking of forms with dozens of fields, you might want to split the form up into fieldsets:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">PollAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="n">fieldsets</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">None</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">'fields'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'question'</span><span class="p">]}),</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'Date information'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">'fields'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'pub_date'</span><span class="p">]}),</span> <span class="p">]</span> <span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Poll</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">PollAdmin</span><span class="p">)</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>The first element of each tuple in <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">fieldsets</span></tt> is the title of the fieldset. Here’s what our form looks like now:</p> <img alt="Form has fieldsets now" src="../_images/admin08t.png" /> <p>You can assign arbitrary HTML classes to each fieldset. Django provides a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">"collapse"</span></tt> class that displays a particular fieldset initially collapsed. This is useful when you have a long form that contains a number of fields that aren’t commonly used:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">PollAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="n">fieldsets</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">None</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">'fields'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'question'</span><span class="p">]}),</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'Date information'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">'fields'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'pub_date'</span><span class="p">],</span> <span class="s">'classes'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'collapse'</span><span class="p">]}),</span> <span class="p">]</span> </pre></div> </div> <img alt="Fieldset is initially collapsed" src="../_images/admin09.png" /> </div> <div class="section" id="s-adding-related-objects"> <span id="adding-related-objects"></span><h2>Adding related objects<a class="headerlink" href="#adding-related-objects" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>OK, we have our Poll admin page. But a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Poll</span></tt> has multiple <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Choices</span></tt>, and the admin page doesn’t display choices.</p> <p>Yet.</p> <p>There are two ways to solve this problem. The first is to register <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Choice</span></tt> with the admin just as we did with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Poll</span></tt>. That’s easy:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Choice</span> <span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Choice</span><span class="p">)</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>Now “Choices” is an available option in the Django admin. The “Add choice” form looks like this:</p> <img alt="Choice admin page" src="../_images/admin10.png" /> <p>In that form, the “Poll” field is a select box containing every poll in the database. Django knows that a <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/fields.html#django.db.models.ForeignKey" title="django.db.models.ForeignKey"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">ForeignKey</span></tt></a> should be represented in the admin as a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre"><select></span></tt> box. In our case, only one poll exists at this point.</p> <p>Also note the “Add Another” link next to “Poll.” Every object with a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ForeignKey</span></tt> relationship to another gets this for free. When you click “Add Another,” you’ll get a popup window with the “Add poll” form. If you add a poll in that window and click “Save,” Django will save the poll to the database and dynamically add it as the selected choice on the “Add choice” form you’re looking at.</p> <p>But, really, this is an inefficient way of adding Choice objects to the system. It’d be better if you could add a bunch of Choices directly when you create the Poll object. Let’s make that happen.</p> <p>Remove the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">register()</span></tt> call for the Choice model. Then, edit the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Poll</span></tt> registration code to read:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">ChoiceInline</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">StackedInline</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="n">model</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">Choice</span> <span class="n">extra</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">3</span> <span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">PollAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="n">fieldsets</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">None</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">'fields'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'question'</span><span class="p">]}),</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'Date information'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">'fields'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'pub_date'</span><span class="p">],</span> <span class="s">'classes'</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'collapse'</span><span class="p">]}),</span> <span class="p">]</span> <span class="n">inlines</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="n">ChoiceInline</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Poll</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">PollAdmin</span><span class="p">)</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>This tells Django: “Choice objects are edited on the Poll admin page. By default, provide enough fields for 3 choices.”</p> <p>Load the “Add poll” page to see how that looks, you may need to restart your development server:</p> <img alt="Add poll page now has choices on it" src="../_images/admin11t.png" /> <p>It works like this: There are three slots for related Choices – as specified by <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">extra</span></tt> – and each time you come back to the “Change” page for an already-created object, you get another three extra slots.</p> <p>At the end of the three current slots you will find an “Add another Choice” link. If you click on it, a new slot will be added. If you want to remove the added slot, you can click on the X to the top right of the added slot. Note that you can’t remove the original three slots. This image shows an added slot:</p> <img alt="Additional slot added dynamically" src="../_images/admin15t.png" /> <p>One small problem, though. It takes a lot of screen space to display all the fields for entering related Choice objects. For that reason, Django offers a tabular way of displaying inline related objects; you just need to change the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ChoiceInline</span></tt> declaration to read:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><pre>class ChoiceInline(admin.TabularInline): #...</pre> </div> <p>With that <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">TabularInline</span></tt> (instead of <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">StackedInline</span></tt>), the related objects are displayed in a more compact, table-based format:</p> <img alt="Add poll page now has more compact choices" src="../_images/admin12t.png" /> <p>Note that there is an extra “Delete?” column that allows removing rows added using the “Add Another Choice” button and rows that have already been saved.</p> </div> <div class="section" id="s-customize-the-admin-change-list"> <span id="customize-the-admin-change-list"></span><h2>Customize the admin change list<a class="headerlink" href="#customize-the-admin-change-list" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>Now that the Poll admin page is looking good, let’s make some tweaks to the “change list” page – the one that displays all the polls in the system.</p> <p>Here’s what it looks like at this point:</p> <img alt="Polls change list page" src="../_images/admin04t.png" /> <p>By default, Django displays the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">str()</span></tt> of each object. But sometimes it’d be more helpful if we could display individual fields. To do that, use the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">list_display</span></tt> admin option, which is a tuple of field names to display, as columns, on the change list page for the object:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">PollAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="c"># ...</span> <span class="n">list_display</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'question'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'pub_date'</span><span class="p">)</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>Just for good measure, let’s also include the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">was_published_recently</span></tt> custom method from Tutorial 1:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">PollAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="c"># ...</span> <span class="n">list_display</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'question'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'pub_date'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'was_published_recently'</span><span class="p">)</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>Now the poll change list page looks like this:</p> <img alt="Polls change list page, updated" src="../_images/admin13t.png" /> <p>You can click on the column headers to sort by those values – except in the case of the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">was_published_recently</span></tt> header, because sorting by the output of an arbitrary method is not supported. Also note that the column header for <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">was_published_recently</span></tt> is, by default, the name of the method (with underscores replaced with spaces), and that each line contains the string representation of the output.</p> <p>You can improve that by giving that method (in <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">models.py</span></tt>) a few attributes, as follows:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">Poll</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">models</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Model</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="c"># ...</span> <span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">was_published_recently</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">self</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="k">return</span> <span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">pub_date</span> <span class="o">>=</span> <span class="n">timezone</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">now</span><span class="p">()</span> <span class="o">-</span> <span class="n">datetime</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">timedelta</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">days</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="n">was_published_recently</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">admin_order_field</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'pub_date'</span> <span class="n">was_published_recently</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">boolean</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="bp">True</span> <span class="n">was_published_recently</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">short_description</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'Published recently?'</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>Edit your admin.py file again and add an improvement to the Poll change list page: Filters. Add the following line to <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">PollAdmin</span></tt>:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">list_filter</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'pub_date'</span><span class="p">]</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>That adds a “Filter” sidebar that lets people filter the change list by the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">pub_date</span></tt> field:</p> <img alt="Polls change list page, updated" src="../_images/admin14t.png" /> <p>The type of filter displayed depends on the type of field you’re filtering on. Because <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">pub_date</span></tt> is a <tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">DateTimeField</span></tt>, Django knows to give appropriate filter options: “Any date,” “Today,” “Past 7 days,” “This month,” “This year.”</p> <p>This is shaping up well. Let’s add some search capability:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">search_fields</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'question'</span><span class="p">]</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>That adds a search box at the top of the change list. When somebody enters search terms, Django will search the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">question</span></tt> field. You can use as many fields as you’d like – although because it uses a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">LIKE</span></tt> query behind the scenes, keep it reasonable, to keep your database happy.</p> <p>Finally, because Poll objects have dates, it’d be convenient to be able to drill down by date. Add this line:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">date_hierarchy</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'pub_date'</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>That adds hierarchical navigation, by date, to the top of the change list page. At top level, it displays all available years. Then it drills down to months and, ultimately, days.</p> <p>Now’s also a good time to note that change lists give you free pagination. The default is to display 100 items per page. Change-list pagination, search boxes, filters, date-hierarchies and column-header-ordering all work together like you think they should.</p> </div> <div class="section" id="s-customize-the-admin-look-and-feel"> <span id="customize-the-admin-look-and-feel"></span><h2>Customize the admin look and feel<a class="headerlink" href="#customize-the-admin-look-and-feel" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>Clearly, having “Django administration” at the top of each admin page is ridiculous. It’s just placeholder text.</p> <p>That’s easy to change, though, using Django’s template system. The Django admin is powered by Django itself, and its interfaces use Django’s own template system.</p> <p>Open your settings file (<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">mysite/settings.py</span></tt>, remember) and look at the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a> setting. <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a> is a tuple of filesystem directories to check when loading Django templates. It’s a search path.</p> <p>By default, <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a> is empty. So, let’s add a line to it, to tell Django where our templates live:</p> <div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">(</span> <span class="s">'/home/my_username/mytemplates'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="c"># Change this to your own directory.</span> <span class="p">)</span> </pre></div> </div> <p>Now copy the template <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin/base_site.html</span></tt> from within the default Django admin template directory in the source code of Django itself (<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">django/contrib/admin/templates</span></tt>) into an <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin</span></tt> subdirectory of whichever directory you’re using in <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a>. For example, if your <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a> includes <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">'/home/my_username/mytemplates'</span></tt>, as above, then copy <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">django/contrib/admin/templates/admin/base_site.html</span></tt> to <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">/home/my_username/mytemplates/admin/base_site.html</span></tt>. Don’t forget that <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin</span></tt> subdirectory.</p> <div class="admonition-where-are-the-django-source-files admonition"> <p class="first admonition-title">Where are the Django source files?</p> <p>If you have difficulty finding where the Django source files are located on your system, run the following command:</p> <div class="last highlight-bash"><div class="highlight"><pre>python -c <span class="s2">"</span> <span class="s2">import sys</span> <span class="s2">sys.path = sys.path[1:]</span> <span class="s2">import django</span> <span class="s2">print(django.__path__)"</span> </pre></div> </div> </div> <p>Then, just edit the file and replace the generic Django text with your own site’s name as you see fit.</p> <p>This template file contains lots of text like <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{%</span> <span class="pre">block</span> <span class="pre">branding</span> <span class="pre">%}</span></tt> and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{{</span> <span class="pre">title</span> <span class="pre">}}</span></tt>. The <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{%</span></tt> and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{{</span></tt> tags are part of Django’s template language. When Django renders <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin/base_site.html</span></tt>, this template language will be evaluated to produce the final HTML page. Don’t worry if you can’t make any sense of the template right now – we’ll delve into Django’s templating language in Tutorial 3.</p> <p>Note that any of Django’s default admin templates can be overridden. To override a template, just do the same thing you did with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">base_site.html</span></tt> – copy it from the default directory into your custom directory, and make changes.</p> <p>Astute readers will ask: But if <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a> was empty by default, how was Django finding the default admin templates? The answer is that, by default, Django automatically looks for a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">templates/</span></tt> subdirectory within each app package, for use as a fallback. See the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/templates/api.html#template-loaders"><em>template loader documentation</em></a> for full information.</p> </div> <div class="section" id="s-customize-the-admin-index-page"> <span id="customize-the-admin-index-page"></span><h2>Customize the admin index page<a class="headerlink" href="#customize-the-admin-index-page" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2> <p>On a similar note, you might want to customize the look and feel of the Django admin index page.</p> <p>By default, it displays all the apps in <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-INSTALLED_APPS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">INSTALLED_APPS</span></tt></a> that have been registered with the admin application, in alphabetical order. You may want to make significant changes to the layout. After all, the index is probably the most important page of the admin, and it should be easy to use.</p> <p>The template to customize is <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin/index.html</span></tt>. (Do the same as with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin/base_site.html</span></tt> in the previous section – copy it from the default directory to your custom template directory.) Edit the file, and you’ll see it uses a template variable called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">app_list</span></tt>. That variable contains every installed Django app. Instead of using that, you can hard-code links to object-specific admin pages in whatever way you think is best. Again, don’t worry if you can’t understand the template language – we’ll cover that in more detail in Tutorial 3.</p> <p>When you’re comfortable with the admin site, read <a class="reference internal" href="tutorial03.html"><em>part 3 of this tutorial</em></a> to start working on public poll views.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="yui-b" id="sidebar"> <div class="sphinxsidebar"> <div class="sphinxsidebarwrapper"> <h3><a href="../contents.html">Table Of Contents</a></h3> <ul> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Writing your first Django app, part 2</a><ul> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#activate-the-admin-site">Activate the admin site</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#start-the-development-server">Start the development server</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#enter-the-admin-site">Enter the admin site</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#make-the-poll-app-modifiable-in-the-admin">Make the poll app modifiable in the admin</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#explore-the-free-admin-functionality">Explore the free admin functionality</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#customize-the-admin-form">Customize the admin form</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#adding-related-objects">Adding related objects</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#customize-the-admin-change-list">Customize the admin change list</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#customize-the-admin-look-and-feel">Customize the admin look and feel</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#customize-the-admin-index-page">Customize the admin index page</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> <h3>Browse</h3> <ul> <li>Prev: <a href="tutorial01.html">Writing your first Django app, part 1</a></li> <li>Next: <a href="tutorial03.html">Writing your first Django app, part 3</a></li> </ul> <h3>You are here:</h3> <ul> <li> <a href="../index.html">Django 1.4.21 documentation</a> <ul><li><a href="index.html">Getting started</a> <ul><li>Writing your first Django app, part 2</li></ul> </li></ul> </li> </ul> <h3>This Page</h3> <ul class="this-page-menu"> <li><a href="../_sources/intro/tutorial02.txt" rel="nofollow">Show Source</a></li> </ul> <div id="searchbox" style="display: none"> <h3>Quick search</h3> <form class="search" action="../search.html" method="get"> <input type="text" name="q" /> <input type="submit" value="Go" /> <input type="hidden" name="check_keywords" value="yes" /> <input type="hidden" name="area" value="default" /> </form> <p class="searchtip" style="font-size: 90%"> Enter search terms or a module, class or function name. </p> </div> <script type="text/javascript">$('#searchbox').show(0);</script> </div> </div> <h3>Last update:</h3> <p class="topless">Jul 10, 2015</p> </div> </div> <div id="ft"> <div class="nav"> « <a href="tutorial01.html" title="Writing your first Django app, part 1">previous</a> | <a href="index.html" title="Getting started" accesskey="U">up</a> | <a href="tutorial03.html" title="Writing your first Django app, part 3">next</a> »</div> </div> </div> <div class="clearer"></div> </div> </body> </html>