Nested inlines in the Django admin?

Question

Alright, I have a fairly simple design.

class Update(models.Model):
    pub_date = models.DateField()
    title = models.CharField(max_length=512)

class Post(models.Model):
    update = models.ForeignKey(Update)
    body = models.TextField()
    order = models.PositiveIntegerField(blank=True)

class Media(models.Model):
    post = models.ForeignKey(Post)
    thumb = models.ImageField(upload_to='frontpage')
    fullImagePath = models.ImageField(upload_to='frontpage')

Is there an easy-ish way to allow a user to create an update all on one page?

What I want is for a user to be able to go to the admin interface, add a new Update, and then while editing an Update add one or more Posts, with each Post having one or more Media items. In addition, I want the user to be able to reorder Posts within an update.

My current attempt has the following in admin.py:

class MediaInline(admin.StackedInline):
    model = Media

class PostAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    inlines = [MediaInline,]

This let's the user add a new Post item, select the relevant Update, add the Media items to it, and hit save - which is fine. But there's no way to see all the Posts that belong to a given Update in a single place, which in turn means you can't roderder Posts within an update. It's really quite confusing for the end user.

Help?

Solution 1

As of now there is no "built-in" way to have nested inlines (inline inside inline) in django.contrib.admin. Pulling something like this off is possible by having your own ModelAdmin and InlineModelAdmin subclasses that would enable this kind of functionality. See the patches on this ticket http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/9025 for ideas on how to implement this. You'd also need to provide your own templates that would have nested iteration over both the top level inline and it's child inline.

Solution 2

There is now this egg available, which is a collation of the relevant patches mentioned in the other answer:

https://github.com/theatlantic/django-nested-admin

Solution 3

I have done this using https://github.com/theatlantic/django-nested-admin, for the following Data structure:

• Contest
  • Judges
  • Contestants
    • Singers
    • Songs

My admin.pyfile:

from django.contrib import admin
import nested_admin

from .models import Contest, Contestant, Judge, Song, Singer    

class SongInline(nested_admin.NestedTabularInline):
    model = Song
    extra = 0

class SingerInline(nested_admin.NestedTabularInline):
    model = Singer
    extra = 0

class ContestantInline(nested_admin.NestedTabularInline):
    model = Contestant
    inlines = [SongInline, SingerInline]
    extra = 0

class JudgeInline(nested_admin.NestedTabularInline):
    model = Judge
    extra = 0

class ContestAdmin(nested_admin.NestedModelAdmin):
    model = Contest
    inlines = [ContestantInline, JudgeInline]
    extra = 0

admin.site.register(Contest, ContestAdmin)

https://github.com/theatlantic/django-nested-admin appears to be much more actively maintained than the other apps already mentioned (https://github.com/BertrandBordage/django-super-inlines and https://github.com/Soaa-/django-nested-inlines)

Solution 4

I have just ran into this issue as well... Seems this thread which contains the request for the nested inlines feature (https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/9025#no2) has been updated with further information.

A custom made app called "django-super-inline" has been released. More details here: https://github.com/BertrandBordage/django-super-inlines

Installation and usage instructions below.

Hope this is useful for whomever comes across this.

Solution 5

I ran into a similar issue to this. My approach was to make an UpdateAdmin that held inlines for both Media and Post... it basically just makes it so you have a list of all of the media entries followed by all of the posts in an update.

class MediaInline(admin.StackedInline):
        model = Media

class PostInline(admin.StackedInline):
        model = Post

class PostAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
        inlines = [MediaInline,]

class UpdateAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
        inlines = [MediaInline,PostInline]

It isn't an ideal solution but it works for a quick and dirty work around.

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Comments

[andilabs]

is it still up-to-date state of django?

[whale_steward]

is it working for django 1.8 ? the last commit is in 2013

[Bryce Guinta]

@andi The ticket has been assigned For now pypi.python.org/pypi/django-nested-admin

[Sashko Lykhenko]

as of now, it does not support python 3

[undefined]

What does extra = 0 mean?

[undefined]

Ok this is a setting to show n empty rows so that new items can be added. With 0 empty rows you have to click on the 'Add another ... Relationship' button. Sorry for the email SPAM.