Ordering admin.ModelAdmin objects

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Let's say I have my pizza application with Topping and Pizza classes and they show in Django Admin like this:

PizzaApp
-
Toppings      >>>>>>>>>>      Add / Change

Pizzas        >>>>>>>>>>      Add / Change

But I want them like this:

PizzaApp
-
Pizzas        >>>>>>>>>>      Add / Change

Toppings      >>>>>>>>>>      Add / Change

How do I configure that in my admin.py?

20 Answers

I eventually managed to do it thanks to this Django snippet, you just need to be aware of the ADMIN_REORDER setting:

ADMIN_REORDER = (
    ('app1', ('App1Model1', 'App1Model2', 'App1Model3')),
    ('app2', ('App2Model1', 'App2Model2')),
)

app1 must not be prefixed with the project name, i.e. use app1 instead of mysite.app1.

Answer in June 2018

This answer is similar to Vasil's idea

I tried to solve similar problems, and then I saw such the fragment.

I made some modifications based on this clip. The code is as follows.

# myproject/setting.py
...
# set my ordering list
ADMIN_ORDERING = [
    ('pizza_app', [
        'Pizzas',
        'Toppings'
    ]),
]
# Creating a sort function
def get_app_list(self, request):
    app_dict = self._build_app_dict(request)
    for app_name, object_list in ADMIN_ORDERING:
        app = app_dict[app_name]
        app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: object_list.index(x['object_name']))
        yield app


# Covering django.contrib.admin.AdminSite.get_app_list
from django.contrib import admin

admin.AdminSite.get_app_list = get_app_list
...

Note that the sorting list used in this sorting function contains the sorting of all app and its modules in the system. If you don't need it, please design the sorting function according to your own needs.

It works great on Django 2.0

This is actually covered at the very bottom of Writing your first Django app, part 7.

Here's the relevant section:

Customize the admin index page

On a similar note, you might want to customize the look and feel of the Django admin index page.

By default, it displays all the apps in INSTALLED_APPS 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.

The template to customize is admin/index.html. (Do the same as with admin/base_site.html 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 app_list. 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.

ADMIN_ORDERING = {
    "PizzaApp": [
        "Pizzas",
        "Toppings",
    ],
}


def get_app_list(self, request):
    app_dict = self._build_app_dict(request)
    for app_name, object_list in app_dict.items():
        if app_name in ADMIN_ORDERING:
            app = app_dict[app_name]
            app["models"].sort(
                key=lambda x: ADMIN_ORDERING[app_name].index(x["object_name"])
            )
            app_dict[app_name]
            yield app
        else:
            yield app_dict[app_name]


admin.AdminSite.get_app_list = get_app_list

This solution works for me, modified the one from 林伟雄.

You get to keep the default auth ordering AND specify your own.

If you're using Suit for the AdminSite you can do menu customization using the menu tag.

Here's a version that gives you a bit more flexibility, namely:

  • You can partially define apps ordering, leaving the rest for Django to add to the list
  • You can specify order on modules, or avoid defining it, by using '*' instead
  • Your defined apps ordering will appear first, then all the rest of apps appended after it
  • To check the name of your app, either look at the file apps.py inside the app's directory and check for name property of the class Config(AppConfi): or in case that is not present, use the name of the directory for the app in the project.

Add this code somewhere in your settings.py file:

# ======[Setting the order in which the apps/modules show up listed on Admin]========
# set my ordering list
ADMIN_ORDERING = [
    ('crm', '*'),
    ('property', '*'),
]


# Creating a sort function
def get_app_list(self, request):
    """
    Returns a sorted list of all the installed apps that have been
    registered in this site.

    Allows for:
        ADMIN_ORDERING = [
            ('app_1', [
                'module_1',
                'module_2'
            ]),
            ('app_2', '*'),
        ]
    """

    app_dict = self._build_app_dict(request)

    # Let's start by sorting the apps alphabetically on a list:
    app_list = sorted(app_dict.values(), key=lambda x: x['name'].lower())

    # Sorting the models alphabetically within each app.
    for app in app_list:
        if app['app_label'] in [el[0] for el in ADMIN_ORDERING]:
            app_list.remove(app)
        else:
            app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: x['name'])

    # Now we order the app list in our defined way in ADMIN_ORDERING (which could be a subset of all apps).
    my_ordered_apps = []
    if app_dict:
        for app_name, object_list in ADMIN_ORDERING:
            app = app_dict[app_name]
            if object_list == '*':
                app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: x['name'])
            else:
                app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: object_list.index(x['object_name']))
            my_ordered_apps.append(app)

        # Now we combine and arrange the 2 lists together
        my_ordered_apps.extend(app_list)

    return my_ordered_apps

# Covering django.contrib.admin.AdminSite.get_app_list
from django.contrib import admin
admin.AdminSite.get_app_list = get_app_list
# =========================================

This is nothing more than overwriting the function defined by Django on the file python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/sites.py.

That get_app_list method of class AdminSite(object): produces a data structure with all apps on the project, including for Django's auth app, such as:

[
  {
    "app_label": "auth",
    "app_url": "/admin/auth/",
    "has_module_perms": "True",
    "models": [
      {
        "add_url": "/admin/auth/group/add/",
        "admin_url": "/admin/auth/group/",
        "name": "<django.utils.functional.__proxy__ object at 0x11057f990>",
        "object_name": "Group",
        "perms": {
          "add": "True",
          "change": "True",
          "delete": "True"
        }
      },
      {
        "add_url": "/admin/auth/user/add/",
        "admin_url": "/admin/auth/user/",
        "name": "<django.utils.functional.__proxy__ object at 0x11057f710>",
        "object_name": "User",
        "perms": {
          "add": "True",
          "change": "True",
          "delete": "True"
        }
      }
    ],
    "name": "<django.utils.functional.__proxy__ object at 0x108b81850>"
  },
  {
    "app_label": "reservations",
    "app_url": "/admin/reservations/",
    "has_module_perms": "True",
    "models": [
      {
        "add_url": "/admin/reservations/reservationrule/add/",
        "admin_url": "/admin/reservations/reservationrule/",
        "name": "<django.utils.functional.__proxy__ object at 0x11057f6d0>",
        "object_name": "ReservationRule",
        "perms": {
          "add": "True",
          "change": "True",
          "delete": "True"
        }
      }
    ],
    "name": "Availability"
  },
  {
    "app_label": "blog",
    "app_url": "/admin/blog/",
    "has_module_perms": "True",
    "models": [
      {
        "add_url": "/admin/blog/category/add/",
        "admin_url": "/admin/blog/category/",
        "name": "Categories",
        "object_name": "Category",
        "perms": {
          "add": "True",
          "change": "True",
          "delete": "True"
        }
      },
      {
        "add_url": "/admin/blog/post/add/",
        "admin_url": "/admin/blog/post/",
        "name": "<django.utils.functional.__proxy__ object at 0x11057f110>",
        "object_name": "Post",
        "perms": {
          "add": "True",
          "change": "True",
          "delete": "True"
        }
      },
      {
        "add_url": "/admin/blog/tag/add/",
        "admin_url": "/admin/blog/tag/",
        "name": "<django.utils.functional.__proxy__ object at 0x11057f390>",
        "object_name": "Tag",
        "perms": {
          "add": "True",
          "change": "True",
          "delete": "True"
        }
      }
    ],
    "name": "Blog"
  },
(...)
]

This is just a wild stab in the dark, but is there any chance that the order in which you call admin.site.register(< Model class >, < ModelAdmin class >) can determine the display order? Actually, I doubt that would work because I believe Django maintains a registry of the Model -> ModelAdmin objects implemented as a standard Python dictionary, which does not maintain iteration ordering.

If that doesn't behave the way you want, you can always play around with the source in django/contrib/admin. If you need the iteration order maintained, you could replace the _registry object in the AdminSite class (in admin/sites.py) with a UserDict or DictMixin that maintains insertion order for the keys. (But please take this advice with a grain of salt, since I've never made these kinds of changes myself and I'm only making an educated guess at how Django iterates over the collection of ModelAdmin objects. I do think that django/contrib/admin/sites.py is the place to look for this code, though, and the AdminSite class and register() and index() methods in particular are what you want.)

Obviously the nicest thing here would be a simple option for you to specify in your own /admin.py module. I'm sure that's the kind of answer you were hoping to receive. I'm not sure if those options exist, though.

My solution was to make subclasses of django.contrib.admin.sites.AdminSite and django.contrib.admin.options.ModelAdmin .

I did this so I could display a more descriptive title for each app and order the appearance of models in each app. So I have a dict in my settings.py that maps app_labels to descriptive names and the order in which they should appear, the models are ordered by an ordinal field I provide in each ModelAdmin when I register them with the admin site.

Although making your own subclasses of AdminSite and ModelAdmin is encouraged in the docs, my solution looks like an ugly hack in the end.

Copy lib\site-packages\django\contrib\admin\templates\admin\index.html template to project1\templates\admin\ directory, where project1 is the name of your project.

In the copied file, i.e. project1\templates\admin\index.html, replace lines:

{% block content %} 
...
{% endblock %}

with:

{% block content %}
<div id="content-main">

{% if app_list %}
    <div class="module">
        <table>
            <caption>App 1</caption>
            <tr>  <th>  <a href="/admin/app1/model1/">Model 1</a>  </th>  <td>Description of model 1</td>  </tr>
            <tr>  <th>  <a href="/admin/app1/model2/">Model 2</a>  </th>  <td>Description of model 1</td>  </tr>
            <tr>  <th>  <a href="..."                >...</a>      </th>  <td>...</td>                     </tr>
        </table>
    </div>

    <div class="module">
        <table>
            <caption>Authentication and authorization</caption>
            <tr>  <th>  <a href="/admin/auth/user/"  >Users</a>    </th>  <td>List of users</td>           </tr>
            <tr>  <th>  <a href="/admin/auth/group/" >Groups</a>   </th>  <td>List of users' groups</td>   </tr>
        </table>
    </div>
{% else %}
    <p>{% trans "You don't have permission to view or edit anything." %}</p>
{% endif %}

</div>
{% endblock %}  

where:

  • app1 is the name of your application with models,
  • modeli is the name of i-th model in app1.

If you defined more than one application with models in your project, then simply add another table in the above index.html file.

Because we change the template, we can freely change its HTML code. For example we can add a description of the models as it was shown above. You can also restore Add and Change links - I deleted them since I think they are redundant.

The answer is a practical demonstration of the solution from Dave Kasper's answer.

custom_admin.py

from django.contrib.admin import AdminSite


class CustomAdminSite(AdminSite):
    def get_urls(self):
        urls = super(MyAdminSite, self).get_urls()
        return urls

    def get_app_list(self, request):
        app_dict = self._build_app_dict(request)
        ordered_app_list = []

        if app_dict:
            # TODO: change this dict
            admin_ordering = {
                'app1': ('Model1', 'Model2'),
                'app2': ('Model7', 'Model4'),
                'app3': ('Model3',),
            }

            ordered_app_list = []
            for app_key in admin_ordering:
                app = app_dict[app_key]
                app_ordered_models = []
                for model_name in admin_ordering[app_key]:
                    for model in app_dict[app_key]['models']:
                        if model['object_name'] == model_name:
                            app_ordered_models.append(model)
                            break

                app['models'] = app_ordered_models
                ordered_app_list.append(app)

        return ordered_app_list

admin_site = CustomAdminSite()

urls.py

from custom_admin import admin_site

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin_site.urls),
]

Add the below code to your settings.py:

def get_app_list(self, request):
    """
    Return a sorted list of all the installed apps that have been
    registered on this site.
    """
    ordering = {
        # for superuser
        'Group': 1,
        'User': 2,

        # fist app
        'TopMessage': 101,
        'Slider': 102,
        'ProductCategory': 103,
        'Product': 104,
        'ProductPicture': 105,
        
        # 2nd app
        'ProductReview': 201,
        'Promotion': 202,
        'BestSeller': 203,
    }
    app_dict = self._build_app_dict(request)
    app_list = sorted(app_dict.values(), key=lambda x: x['name'].lower())

    for app in app_list:
        app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: ordering[x['object_name']])

    return app_list


admin.AdminSite.get_app_list = get_app_list

And make changes to the ordering dictionary to match your apps and models. That's it.

The benefit of my solution is that it will show the 'auth' models if the user is a superuser.

Django, by default, orders the models in admin alphabetically. So the order of models in Event admin is Epic, EventHero, EventVillain, Event

Instead you want the order to be

  • EventHero, EventVillain, Epic then event.

The template used to render the admin index page is admin/index.html and the view function is ModelAdmin.index.

def index(self, request, extra_context=None):
"""
Display the main admin index page, which lists all of the installed
apps that have been registered in this site.
"""
app_list = self.get_app_list(request)
context = {
    **self.each_context(request),
    'title': self.index_title,
    'app_list': app_list,
    **(extra_context or {}),
}

request.current_app = self.name

return TemplateResponse(request, self.index_template or
    'admin/index.html', context)

The method get_app_list, set the order of the models.:

def get_app_list(self, request):
"""
Return a sorted list of all the installed apps that have been
registered in this site.
"""
app_dict = self._build_app_dict(request)

# Sort the apps alphabetically.
app_list = sorted(app_dict.values(), key=lambda x: x['name'].lower())

# Sort the models alphabetically within each app.
for app in app_list:
    app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: x['name'])

return app_list

So to set the order we override get_app_list as:

class EventAdminSite(AdminSite):
def get_app_list(self, request):
    """
    Return a sorted list of all the installed apps that have been
    registered in this site.
    """
    ordering = {
        "Event heros": 1,
        "Event villains": 2,
        "Epics": 3,
        "Events": 4
    }
    app_dict = self._build_app_dict(request)
    # a.sort(key=lambda x: b.index(x[0]))
    # Sort the apps alphabetically.
    app_list = sorted(app_dict.values(), key=lambda x: x['name'].lower())

    # Sort the models alphabetically within each app.
    for app in app_list:
        app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: ordering[x['name']])

    return app_list

The code app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: ordering[x['name']]) sets the fixed ordering. Your app now looks like this.

enter image description here

Check the Documentation

In Settings.py file setting the order in which the apps/modules show up listed on Admin

set my ordering list

ADMIN_ORDERING = [
    ('Your_App1', '*'),
    ('Your_App2', '*'),
]

Creating a sort function below ADMIN_ORDERING

def get_app_list(self, request):
    """
    You Can Set Manually Ordering For Your Apps And Models   

        ADMIN_ORDERING = [
            ('Your_App1', [
                'module_1',
                'module_2'
            ]),
            ('Your_App2', '*'),
        ]
    """

    app_dict = self._build_app_dict(request)

    # Let's start by sorting the apps alphabetically on a list:
    app_list = sorted(app_dict.values(), key=lambda x: x['name'].lower())

    # Sorting the models alphabetically within each app.
    for app in app_list:
        if app['app_label'] in [el[0] for el in ADMIN_ORDERING]:
            app_list.remove(app)
        else:
            app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: x['name'])

    # Now we order the app list in our defined way in ADMIN_ORDERING (which could be a subset of all apps).
    my_ordered_apps = []
    if app_dict:
        for app_name, object_list in ADMIN_ORDERING:
            app = app_dict[app_name]
            if object_list == '*':
                app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: x['name'])
            else:
                app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: object_list.index(x['object_name']))
            my_ordered_apps.append(app)

        # Now we combine and arrange the 2 lists together
        my_ordered_apps.extend(app_list)

    return my_ordered_apps

# Covering django.contrib.admin.AdminSite.get_app_list
from django.contrib import admin
admin.AdminSite.get_app_list = get_app_list

Quite a simple and self contained approach can be using the decorator pattern to resort your app and modules in this way:

# admin.py

from django.contrib import admin

def app_resort(func):                                                                                            
    def inner(*args, **kwargs):                                                                                            
        app_list = func(*args, **kwargs)
        # Useful to discover your app and module list:
        #import pprint                                                                                          
        #pprint.pprint(app_list)

        app_sort_key = 'name'
        app_ordering = {
            "APP_NAME1": 1,
            "APP_NAME2": 2,
            "APP_NAME3": 3,
        }

        resorted_app_list = sorted(app_list, key=lambda x: app_ordering[x[app_sort_key]] if x[app_sort_key] in app_ordering else 1000)

        model_sort_key = 'object_name'
        model_ordering = {
            "Model1": 1,
            "Model2": 2,
            "Model3": 3,
            "Model14": 4,
        }
        for app in resorted_app_list:
            app['models'].sort(key=lambda x: model_ordering[x[model_sort_key]] if x[model_sort_key] in model_ordering else 1000)
        return resorted_app_list
    return inner                                                                                            
                   
admin.site.get_app_list = app_resort(admin.site.get_app_list)

This code sorts at the top only the defined keys in the ordering dict, leaving at the bottom all the other. The approach is clean but it requires get_app_list to be executed before... which is probably not a good idea when performance is important and you have a large app_list.

This has become a lot easier in Django 4.1:

The AdminSite.get_app_list() method now allows changing the order of apps and models on the admin index page.

You can subclass and override this method to change the order the returned list of apps/models.

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