Create custom buttons in admin change_form in Djan

Question

I want to add custom buttons to the add/change form at the administration interface. By default, there are only three:

• Save and add another

• Save and continue editing

• Save

I have created some custom methods in my forms.py file, and I want to create buttons to call these methods. I have used the snippet http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/1842/, but it's not exactly what I want. This one allows to create buttons and call methods from the admin.py file and not forms.py.

Is there a way to do that?

This is my admin.py code:

class CategoryAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    prepopulated_fields = { "alias": ("title",) }
    form = CategoryForm

admin.site.register(Category, CategoryAdmin)

And my forms.py code,

class CategoryForm(forms.ModelForm):
    """
    My attributes
    """
    def custom_method(self):
        print("Hello, World!")

How do I create a button that calls "custom_method()"?

Answer 1

You can override admin/change_form.html. Copy the version in contrib.admin.templates into your project. Mine is myproject/templates/admin/change_form.html, but you could use /myproject/myapp/templates/admin/change_form.html.

Next, edit the copy and change the two references to the existing template tag, {% submit_row %}, to point to your own template tag, {% my_template_tag %}.

Base your template tag on the contrib.admin's {% submit_row %}, but edit the HTML template to contain any extra buttons you want to display.

Answer 2

One simple way I found to add buttons is to add another row for the custom buttons. Create an admin directory in your template dir based on your needs. For example I usually add buttons for specific models in a custom template. Make a "templates/admin/app/model/" directory.

Then add a file change_form.html.

{% extends "admin/change_form.html" %}
{% load i18n %}

{% block submit_buttons_bottom %}
    <div class="submit-row">
       <input type="button" value="{% trans 'Another Button' %}" name="_anotherbutton" />
    </div>

    {{ block.super }}
{% endblock %}

The code before the {{ block.super }} is inspired by the submit_line.html template used by the template tag {% submit_row %}. I prefer this method because is straightforward but you must live with another row of buttons.

Answer 3

The submit buttons in a change form are rendered by the submit_row template tag. This tag renders the template admin/submit_line.html. Since you want to add to the existing buttons, your best (and DRYest) approach is to override admin/submit_line.html.

For example, create a file my_project/templates/admin/submit_line.html with the following content:

{% load i18n admin_urls %}
<div class="submit-row">
{% if show_save %}<input type="submit" value="{% trans 'Save' %}" class="default" name="_save" {{ onclick_attrib }}/>{% endif %}
{% if show_delete_link %}<p class="deletelink-box"><a href="{% url opts|admin_urlname:'delete' original.pk|admin_urlquote %}" class="deletelink">{% trans "Delete" %}</a></p>{% endif %}
{% if show_save_as_new %}<input type="submit" value="{% trans 'Save as new' %}" name="_saveasnew" {{ onclick_attrib }}/>{%endif%}
{% if show_save_and_add_another %}<input type="submit" value="{% trans 'Save and add another' %}" name="_addanother" {{ onclick_attrib }}/>{% endif %}
{% if show_save_and_continue %}<input type="submit" value="{% trans 'Save and continue editing' %}" name="_continue" {{ onclick_attrib }}/>{% endif %}

<input type="submit" value="{% trans 'New button 1' %}" name="_button1" {{ onclick_attrib }}/>
<input type="submit" value="{% trans 'New button 2' %}" name="_button2" {{ onclick_attrib }}/>
</div>

Most of what's above was copied from django/contrib/admin/templates/submit_line.html. You can also add additional if statements in the template if you only want to show those additional buttons in certain cases.