The document discusses the Django admin interface and alternatives. It describes when to use the Django admin, such as for initial data entry but not public end users. It also discusses customizing the admin display and functions. Finally, it reviews some alternative admin apps for Django like django-xadmin and django-grappelli as well as admin plugins for other frameworks like Flask.

1. Michelle Leu
@flywindy
2014/02/11

2. WHO AND WHEN TO USE THE DJANGO ADMIN
When people ask, “What are the benefits of Django over other web frameworks?”
the admin is what usually comes to mind.
Who
• It's Not for End Users
When
• It’s usually not worth it to heavily customize the Django admin.

3. VIEWING STRING REPRESENTATIONS OF
OBJECTS
• Implement the __unicode__ ()
#EXAMPLE 15.1
from django.db import models
class IceCreamBar(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
shell = models.CharField(max_length=100)
filling = models.CharField(max_length=100)
has_stick = models.BooleanField(default=True)
def __unicode__(self):
return self.name

4. VIEWING STRING REPRESENTATIONS OF
OBJECTS
• Implement the __unicode__ ()
>>> IceCreamBar.objects.all()
[<IceCreamBar: Vanilla Crisp>, <IceCreamBar: Mint Cookie Crunch>,
<IceCreamBar: Strawberry Pie>]

5. VIEWING STRING REPRESENTATIONS OF
OBJECTS
• Use list_display
#EXAMPLE 15.3
from django.contrib import admin
from .models import IceCreamBar
class IceCreamBarAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
list_display = ("name", "shell", "filling”,)
admin.site.register(IceCreamBar, IceCreamBarAdmin)

6. VIEWING STRING REPRESENTATIONS OF
OBJECTS
• Use list_display

7. VIEWING STRING REPRESENTATIONS OF
OBJECTS
• search_fields
• list_filter
• date_hierarchy
• ordering

8. ADDING CALLABLES TO MODELADMIN CLASSES
#EXAMPLE 15.4
from django.contrib import admin
from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse
from icecreambars.models import IceCreamBar
class IceCreamBarAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
list_display = ("name", "shell", "filling",)
readonly_fields = ("show_url",)
def show_url(self, instance):
url = reverse("ice_cream_bar_detail", kwargs={"pk": instance.pk})
response = """<a href="{0}">{0}</a>""".format(url)
return response
show_url.short_description = "Ice Cream Bar URL"
# Displays HTML tags
# Never set allow_tags to True against user submitted data!!!
show_url.allow_tags = True
admin.site.register(IceCreamBar, IceCreamBarAdmin)

9. ADDING CALLABLES TO MODELADMIN CLASSES

10. OTHER FRAMEWORKS
 Flask-admin
 plays nicely with various ORM's, including SQLAlchemy, MongoEngine,
pymongo and Peewee.
 file management interface
 redis client console

11. OTHER FRAMEWORKS
 Web2py
 Web-Based IDE: Create, modify, deploy and manage application from
anywhere using your browser. One web2py instance can run multiple web sites
using different databases.

12. DJANGO ADMIN PLUGIN
django-xadmin(by sshwsfc)
• Drop-in replacement of Django admin
• Twitter Bootstrap based UI with theme support
• Extensible with plugin support
• Better filter, date range, number range, etc.
• Built-in data export with xls, csv, xml and json format
• Dashboard page with widget support
• In-site bookmarking
• Full CRUD methods
• Documentation: Chinese
http://demo.xadmin.io

13. DJANGO ADMIN PLUGIN
django-grappelli (by sehmaschine)
• Clean and consistent look & feel
• Related lookups with Autocompletes
• Inline sortables with Drag & Drop
• Compass-based CSS
• Integrated TinyMCE theme
• Customizable dashboard
• Improved collapsibles
• Unified jQuery-Plugins
• Compatible with django—filebrowser

14. DJANGO ADMIN PLUGIN
django-admin2 (by pydanny)
• Rewrite of the Django Admin backend
• Drop-in themes
• Built-in RESTful API
• (django-rest-framework)
django-admin-bootstrapped
• Bootstrap theme

15. REFERENCE
 Django official doc: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/admin/
 Django Book: http://django-book.readthedocs.org/en/latest/chapter06.html
 Flask-admin doc: https://flask-admin.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
 Flask-admin example: http://examples.flask-admin.org/
 django-xadmin: https://github.com/sshwsfc/django-xadmin
 django-grappelli: http://grappelliproject.com/
 Django Packages - Admin Interface:
https://www.djangopackages.com/grids/g/admin-interface/