Django custom actions for Model Admin forms

Intro

Simple django app that extends the standard Change admin forms to allow an extra bar of buttons with custom actions.

This is similar to how one can extend the List pages with custom actions.

The extra button bar is shown only when there are actions.

Actions can be defined per object.

By default the button bar uses the same style as the normal bar but with a white background and a bigger font.

Similar projects: django-admin-actions

Basics

• Extend from custom_admin_actions.admin.CustomActionsModelAdmin
• Implement get_custom_admin_actions
• Implement custom_action_called
• Optionally define overrides for custom_admin_actions/css/custom_admin_actions.css

Internal architecture

Extends ModelAdmin, overrides render_change_form to add a list of actions to the context and overrides response_change to call methods to process the actions if submitted.

Provides an extension of the admin's default change_form and submit_line templates.

Installation and usage

The package is not (as of yet) published anywhere so just clone it into your project, the license allows you to do whatever you want (BSD-3 clause).

Add it to your apps:

INSTALLED_APPS += [
    "custom_admin_actions",  # additional row of actions for ModelAdmins
    ]

Make your ModelAdmin extend and declare a function to define a function called get_custom_admin_actions that returns a dict declaring the supported action codes and their corresponding labels:

from custom_admin_actions.admin import CustomActionsModelAdmin

...

class SubmissionAdmin(SavesOwnerMixin, CustomActionsModelAdmin):
    ...
    def get_custom_admin_actions(
        self, request, context, add=False, change=False, form_url="", obj=None,
    ):
        if obj and obj.status == obj.Statuses.NEW:
            return {"start_moderation": "Move to Moderation", "reject": "Reject"}
        return {}

Tip: you can use the request and context objects to hide/show actions

Now you can test the app and you'll already see the bar

Now, add a new function custom_action_called to the model admin page to process the actual button presses.

This function will receive the code (key) of the button that was pressed and then you can either return nothing to have the normal action after a change (go back to the list), or any other django http response. Example:

    def custom_action_called(self, request, custom_action_code, obj=None):
        if custom_action_code == "start_moderation":
            moderated_submission = obj.move_to_moderation()
            # we'll redirect to the change page of a new object created from the current one
            redirect_url = reverse(
                "admin:%s_%s_change" % (models.ModeratedSubmission._meta.app_label, models.ModeratedSubmission._meta.model_name,), args=(moderated_submission.pk,), current_app=admin.site.name,
            )
            return HttpResponseRedirect(redirect_url)

        elif custom_action_code == "reject":
            obj.status = obj.Statuses.REJECTED
            obj.save()
            return None