Form field description in django admin

Question

How to add hint for the form field in django admin like in next example?

(here: URL and Content descriptions are shown with gray color under field)

Solution 1

When defining your fields in models.py:

myfield = models.CharField(max_length=100, help_text="This is the grey text")

Bookmark this link:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/fields/#help-text

I find myself referring to it all the time (not just for help_text, but for everything to do with model fields)!

Solution 2

In addition to Timmy's answer, if you want to display some additional help text and want to have some helpful markup too, you can custom display individual form fieldsets and add a description field. Using your example, let's say that you wanted to break out the Content field into it's own fieldset block and add some verbose help text. You can do something like:

from mymodel.models import MyModel
from django.contrib import admin

"""
Custom Help Text
"""
CONTENT_HELP_TEXT = ' '.join(['<p>Here is some multi-line help',
                              'which is a long string so put',
                              'into a list which is then joined',
                              'with spaces. I can do fun things',
                              'like have <strong>bold</strong>',
                              'and some line breaks.<br/>'])
"""
Customize Admin
"""
class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    """
    Add your other customizations
    like actions, list_display, list filter, etc
    """
    fieldsets = [
        ('Content', {
            'fields':('content',),
            'description': '<div class="help">%s</div>' % CONTENT_HELP_TEXT,
        }),
    ]

admin.site.register(MyModel, MyModelAdmin)

More information in the Django docs (scroll down to the fieldsets) area.

Solution 3

In your forms.py file, after the

fields = ['URL',....]

add

help_texts = {"URL": "Example..."}

Comments

[Mechanical snail]

I think you've got the wrong link, since we're talking about models.FooField rather than forms.FooField. It should be docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/fields/#help-text

[pranavk]

and what about adding a multiline field like description ?

[thevasya]

there should be a comma after 'content' inside parentheses

[radtek]

The accepted answer is the standard for forms, but this is the best answer as its independent of the forms and relies on the fieldset breakdown as set by the model admin. Thanks!

[RickyA]

@pranavk it is html so you can use <br/> for line breaks

[ccpizza]

no need to join string lists with spaces — you can simply use backward slash characters `\` to continue the string on the next line without inserting a line break: docs.python.org/3.2/tutorial/introduction.html#strings

[tatlar]

@diegueus9: Your edit to my answer has introduced a grammatical error: you have removed the white space between the words per new line which garbles the sentence. Please fix or roll back to the original.

[tatlar]

@diegueus9: I rolled back to a previous version of the answer. Please double-check your proposed changes for syntax before reinstating.