Welcome to Django Admin Sortable’s documentation!¶
Django Admin Sortable is a super-easy way to add drag-and-drop ordering to almost any model you manage through Django admin. Inlines for a sortable model may also be made sortable, enabling individual items or groups of items to be sortable.
Supported Django Versions¶
Django 1.4.x¶
Use django-admin-sortable 1.4.9 or below.
Note
v1.5.2 introduced backwards incompatible changes for Django 1.4.x
Django >= 1.5.x¶
Use the latest version of django-admin-sortable.
Warning
v1.6.6 introduced a backwards-incompatible change for sorting_filters
. Please update your sorting_filters
attribute(s) to the new, tuple-based format.
Contents:¶
Quickstart¶
To get started using django-admin-sortable
simply install it using pip
:
$ pip install django-admin-sortable
Add adminsortable
to your project’s INSTALLED_APPS
setting.
Ensure django.core.context_processors.static
is in your TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS
setting.
Define your model, inheriting from adminsortable.Sortable
:
# models.py
from adminsortable.models import Sortable
class MySortableClass(Sortable):
class Meta(Sortable.Meta):
pass
title = models.CharField(max_length=50)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.title
Wire up your sortable model to Django admin:
# admin.py
from adminsortable.admin import SortableAdmin
from .models import MySortableClass
class MySortableAdminClass(SortableAdmin):
"""Any admin options you need go here"""
admin.site.register(MySortableClass, MySortableAdminClass)
Your model’s ChangeList view should now have an extra tool link when there are 2 or more objects present that will take you to a view where you can drag-and-drop the objects into your desired order.
Configuring Django Admin Sortable¶
Configuring django-admin-sortable is quite simple:
- Add
adminsortable
to yourINSTALLED_APPS
.- Ensure
django.core.context_processors.static
is in yourTEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS
.
Static Media¶
django-admin-sortable includes a few CSS and JavaScript files. The preferred method of getting these files into your project is to use the staticfiles app.
Alternatively, you can copy or symlink the adminsortable
folder inside the static
directory to the location you serve static files from.
Using Django Admin Sortable¶
Models¶
To add sorting to a model, your model needs to inherit from Sortable
and have an inner Meta
class that inherits from Sortable.Meta
:
# models.py
from adminsortable.models import Sortable
class MySortableClass(Sortable):
class Meta(Sortable.Meta):
pass
title = models.CharField(max_length=50)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.title
It is also possible to order objects relative to another object that is a ForeignKey.
Note
A small caveat here is that Category
must also either inherit from Sortable
or include an order
property which is a PositiveSmallInteger
field. This is due to the way Django admin instantiates classes.
# models.py
from adminsortable.fields import SortableForeignKey
class Category(Sortable):
class Meta(Sortable.Meta):
pass
title = models.CharField(max_length=50)
...
class Project(Sortable):
class Meta(Sortable.Meta):
pass
category = SortableForeignKey(Category)
title = models.CharField(max_length=50)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.title
Sortable
has one field: order
and adds a default ordering value set to order
, ascending.
Adding Sortable to an existing model¶
If you’re adding Sorting to an existing model, it is recommended that you use django-south to create a schema migration to add the “order” field to your model. You will also need to create a data migration in order to add the appropriate values for the order
column.
Example assuming a model named “Category”:
def forwards(self, orm):
for index, category in enumerate(orm.Category.objects.all()):
category.order = index + 1
category.save()
See this link for more information on Data Migrations.
Django Admin¶
To enable sorting in the admin, you need to inherit from SortableAdmin
:
from django.contrib import admin
from myapp.models import MySortableClass
from adminsortable.admin import SortableAdmin
class MySortableAdminClass(SortableAdmin):
"""Any admin options you need go here"""
admin.site.register(MySortableClass, MySortableAdminClass)
To enable sorting on TabularInline models, you need to inherit from SortableTabularInline:
from adminsortable.admin import SortableTabularInline
class MySortableTabularInline(SortableTabularInline):
"""Your inline options go here"""
To enable sorting on StackedInline models, you need to inherit from SortableStackedInline:
from adminsortable.admin import SortableStackedInline
class MySortableStackedInline(SortableStackedInline):
"""Your inline options go here"""
There are also generic equivalents that you can inherit from:
from adminsortable.admin import (SortableGenericTabularInline,
SortableGenericStackedInline)
"""Your generic inline options go here"""
Overriding queryset()
¶
django-admin-sortable supports custom queryset overrides on admin models and inline models in Django admin!
If you’re providing an override of a SortableAdmin
or Sortable
inline model, you don’t need to do anything extra. django-admin-sortable will automatically honor your queryset.
Have a look at the WidgetAdmin
class in the sample project for an example of an admin class with a custom queryset()
override.
Overriding queryset()
for an inline model¶
This is a special case, which requires a few lines of extra code to properly determine the sortability of your model. Example:
# add this import to your admin.py
from adminsortable.utils import get_is_sortable
class ComponentInline(SortableStackedInline):
model = Component
def queryset(self, request):
qs = super(ComponentInline, self).queryset(request).filter(
title__icontains='foo')
# You'll need to add these lines to determine if your model
# is sortable once we hit the change_form() for the parent model.
if get_is_sortable(qs):
self.model.is_sortable = True
else:
self.model.is_sortable = False
return qs
If you override the queryset of an inline, the number of objects present may change, and adminsortable won’t be able to automatically determine if the inline model is sortable from here, which is why we have to set the is_sortable
property of the model in this method.
Sorting subsets of objects¶
It is also possible to sort a subset of objects in your model by adding a sorting_filters
tuple. This works exactly the same as .filter()
on a QuerySet, and is applied after get_queryset()
on the admin class, allowing you to override the queryset as you would normally in admin but apply additional filters for sorting. The text “Change Order of” will appear before each filter in the Change List template, and the filter groups are displayed from left to right in the order listed. If no sorting_filters
are specified, the text “Change Order” will be displayed for the link.
An example of sorting subsets would be a “Board of Directors”. In this use case, you have a list of “People” objects. Some of these people are on the Board of Directors and some not, and you need to sort them independently:
class Person(Sortable):
class Meta(Sortable.Meta):
verbose_name_plural = 'People'
first_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
last_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
is_board_member = models.BooleanField('Board Member', default=False)
sorting_filters = (
('Board Members', {'is_board_member': True}),
('Non-Board Members', {'is_board_member': False}),
)
def __unicode__(self):
return '{} {}'.format(self.first_name, self.last_name)
Warning
django-admin-sortable 1.6.6 introduces a backwards-incompatible change for sorting_filters
. Previously this attribute was defined as a dictionary, so you’ll need to change your values over to the new tuple-based format.
Extending custom templates¶
By default, adminsortable’s change form and change list views inherit from Django admin’s standard templates. Sometimes you need to have a custom change form or change list, but also need adminsortable’s CSS and JavaScript for inline models that are sortable for example.
SortableAdmin
has two attributes you can override for this use case:
change_form_template_extends
change_list_template_extends
These attributes have default values of:
change_form_template_extends = 'admin/change_form.html'
change_list_template_extends = 'admin/change_list.html'
If you need to extend the inline change form templates, you’ll need to select the right one, depending on your version of Django. For Django 1.5.x or below, you’ll need to extend one of the following:
templates/adminsortable/edit_inline/stacked-1.5.x.html
templates/adminsortable/edit_inline/tabular-inline-1.5.x.html
For Django >= 1.6.x, extend:
templates/adminsortable/edit_inline/stacked.html
templates/adminsortable/edit_inline/tabular.html
Note
A Special Note About Stacked Inlines... The height of a stacked inline model can dynamically increase, which can make them difficult to sort. If you anticipate the height of a stacked inline is going to be very tall, I would suggest using TabularStackedInline instead.
Django-CMS Integration¶
Django-CMS plugins use their own change form, and thus won’t automatically include the necessary JavaScript for django-admin-sortable to work. Fortunately, this is easy to resolve, as the CMSPlugin
class allows a change form template to be specified:
# example plugin
from cms.plugin_base import CMSPluginBase
class CMSCarouselPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
admin_preview = False
change_form_template = 'cms/sortable-stacked-inline-change-form.html'
inlines = [SlideInline]
model = Carousel
name = _('Carousel')
render_template = 'carousels/carousel.html'
def render(self, context, instance, placeholder):
context.update({
'carousel': instance,
'placeholder': placeholder
})
return context
plugin_pool.register_plugin(CMSCarouselPlugin)
The contents of sortable-stacked-inline-change-form.html at a minimum need to extend the extrahead block with:
{% extends "admin/cms/page/plugin_change_form.html" %}
{% load static from staticfiles %}
{% block extrahead %}
{{ block.super }}
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/jquery-ui-django-admin.min.js' %}"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/jquery.django-csrf.js' %}"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/admin.sortable.stacked.inlines.js' %}"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{% static 'adminsortable/css/admin.sortable.inline.css' %}" />
{% endblock extrahead %}
Sorting within Django-CMS is really only feasible for inline models of a plugin as Django-CMS already includes sorting for plugin instances. For tabular inlines, just substitute:
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/admin.sortable.stacked.inlines.js' %}"></script>
with:
<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/admin.sortable.tabular.inlines.js' %}"></script>
Known Issue(s)¶
Because of the way inline models are added to their parent model in the change form, it is not currently possible to have sortable inline models whose parent does not inhert from Sortable
.
Testing¶
Have a look at the included /sample_project
directory to see a working project. The login credentials for admin are: admin/admin
When a model is sortable, a tool-area link will be added that says “Change Order”. Click this link, and you will be taken to the custom view where you can drag-and-drop the records into order.
Inlines may be drag-and-dropped into any order directly from the change form.
Unit and functional tests may be found in the app/tests.py
file and run via:
$ python manage.py test app
Rationale¶
Why another drag-and-drop ordering plugin?¶
Other projects have added drag-and-drop ordering to the ChangeList view, however this introduces a couple of problems...
- The ChangeList view supports pagination, which makes drag-and-drop ordering across pages impossible.
- The ChangeList view by default, does not order records based on a foreign key, nor distinguish between rows that are associated with a foreign key. This makes ordering the records grouped by a foreign key impossible.
- The ChangeList supports in-line editing, and adding drag-and-drop ordering on top of that just seemed a little much in my opinion.
Status¶
django-admin-sortable is stable and currently used in production.
Future Plans¶
- Support for foreign keys that are self referential
- Move unit tests out of sample project (I could really use some help with this one)
- Travis CI integration
License¶
django-admin-sortable is released under the Apache Public License v2.