Django Admin Sortable

Current version: 1.6.3

This project makes it easy to add drag-and-drop ordering to any model in Django admin. Inlines for a sortable model may also be made sortable, enabling individual items or groups of items to be sortable.

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Supported Django Versions

If you're using Django 1.4.x, use django-admin-sortable 1.4.9 or below. For Django 1.5.x or higher, use the latest version of django-admin-sortable.

django-admin-sortable 1.5.2 introduced backward-incompatible changes for Django 1.4.x

Installation

1. pip install django-admin-sortable

--or--

Download django-admin-sortable from source

1. Unzip the directory and cd into the uncompressed project directory
2. *Optional: Enable your virtualenv
3. Run $ python setup.py install or add adminsortable to your PYTHONPATH.

Configuration

1. Add adminsortable to your INSTALLED_APPS.
2. Ensure django.core.context_processors.static is in your TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS.

Static Media

Preferred: Use the staticfiles app

Alternate: Copy the adminsortable folder from the static folder to the location you serve static files from.

Testing

Have a look at the included sample_project to see working examples. The login credentials for admin are: admin/admin

When a model is sortable, a tool-area link will be added that says "Change Order". Click this link, and you will be taken to the custom view where you can drag-and-drop the records into order.

Inlines may be drag-and-dropped into any order directly from the change form.

Usage

Models

To add sorting to a model, your model needs to inherit from Sortable and have an inner Meta class that inherits from Sortable.Meta

#models.py
from adminsortable.models import Sortable

class MySortableClass(Sortable):
    class Meta(Sortable.Meta):
        pass

    title = models.CharField(max_length=50)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.title

It is also possible to order objects relative to another object that is a ForeignKey, even if that model does not inherit from Sortable:

from adminsortable.fields import SortableForeignKey

#models.py
class Category(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    ...

class Project(Sortable):
    class Meta(Sortable.Meta):
        pass

    category = SortableForeignKey(Category)
    title = models.CharField(max_length=50)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.title

Sortable has one field: order and adds a default ordering value set to order.

Adding Sortable to an existing model

If you're adding Sorting to an existing model, it is recommended that you use django-south to create a schema migration to add the "order" field to your model. You will also need to create a data migration in order to add the appropriate values for the order column.

Example assuming a model named "Category":

def forwards(self, orm):
    for index, category in enumerate(orm.Category.objects.all()):
        category.order = index + 1
        category.save()

See: this link for more information on Data Migrations.

Django Admin Integration

To enable sorting in the admin, you need to inherit from SortableAdmin:

from django.contrib import admin
from myapp.models import MySortableClass
from adminsortable.admin import SortableAdmin

class MySortableAdminClass(SortableAdmin):
    """Any admin options you need go here"""

admin.site.register(MySortableClass, MySortableAdminClass)

To enable sorting on TabularInline models, you need to inherit from SortableTabularInline:

from adminsortable.admin import SortableTabularInline

class MySortableTabularInline(SortableTabularInline):
   """Your inline options go here"""

To enable sorting on StackedInline models, you need to inherit from SortableStackedInline:

from adminsortable.admin import SortableStackedInline

class MySortableStackedInline(SortableStackedInline):
   """Your inline options go here"""

There are also generic equivalents that you can inherit from:

from adminsortable.admin import (SortableGenericTabularInline,
    SortableGenericStackedInline)
    """Your generic inline options go here"""

Overriding queryset()

django-admin-sortable supports custom queryset overrides on admin models and inline models in Django admin!

If you're providing an override of a SortableAdmin or Sortable inline model, you don't need to do anything extra. django-admin-sortable will automatically honor your queryset.

Have a look at the WidgetAdmin class in the sample project for an example of an admin class with a custom queryset() override.

Overriding queryset() for an inline model

This is a special case, which requires a few lines of extra code to properly determine the sortability of your model. Example:

# add this import to your admin.py
from adminsortable.utils import get_is_sortable


class ComponentInline(SortableStackedInline):
    model = Component

    def queryset(self, request):
        qs = super(ComponentInline, self).queryset(request).filter(
            title__icontains='foo')

        # You'll need to add these lines to determine if your model
        # is sortable once we hit the change_form() for the parent model.

        if get_is_sortable(qs):
            self.model.is_sortable = True
        else:
            self.model.is_sortable = False
        return qs

If you override the queryset of an inline, the number of objects present may change, and adminsortable won't be able to automatically determine if the inline model is sortable from here, which is why we have to set the is_sortable property of the model in this method.

Extending custom templates

By default, adminsortable's change form and change list views inherit from Django admin's standard templates. Sometimes you need to have a custom change form or change list, but also need adminsortable's CSS and JavaScript for inline models that are sortable for example.

SortableAdmin has two properties you can override for this use case:

change_form_template_extends
change_list_template_extends

These properties have default values of:

change_form_template_extends = 'admin/change_form.html'
change_list_template_extends = 'admin/change_list.html'

If you need to extend the inline change form templates, you'll need to select the right one, depending on your version of Django. For Django 1.5.x or below, you'll need to extend one of the following:

templates/adminsortable/edit_inline/stacked-1.5.x.html
templates/adminsortable/edit_inline/tabular-inline-1.5.x.html

For Django 1.6.x, extend:

templates/adminsortable/edit_inline/stacked.html
templates/adminsortable/edit_inline/tabular.html

A Special Note About Stacked Inlines...

The height of a stacked inline model can dynamically increase, which can make them difficult to sort. If you anticipate the height of a stacked inline is going to be very tall, I would suggest using TabularStackedInline instead.

Django-CMS integration

Django-CMS plugins use their own change form, and thus won't automatically include the necessary JavaScript for django-admin-sortable to work. Fortunately, this is easy to resolve, as the CMSPlugin class allows a change form template to be specified:

# example plugin
from cms.plugin_base import CMSPluginBase

class CMSCarouselPlugin(CMSPluginBase):
    admin_preview = False
    change_form_template = 'cms/sortable-stacked-inline-change-form.html'
    inlines = [SlideInline]
    model = Carousel
    name = _('Carousel')
    render_template = 'carousels/carousel.html'

    def render(self, context, instance, placeholder):
        context.update({
            'carousel': instance,
            'placeholder': placeholder
        })
        return context

plugin_pool.register_plugin(CMSCarouselPlugin)

The contents of sortable-stacked-inline-change-form.html at a minimum need to extend the extrahead block with:

{% extends "admin/cms/page/plugin_change_form.html" %}
{% load static from staticfiles %}

{% block extrahead %}
    {{ block.super }}
    <script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/jquery-ui-django-admin.min.js' %}"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/jquery.django-csrf.js' %}"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/admin.sortable.stacked.inlines.js' %}"></script>

    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{% static 'adminsortable/css/admin.sortable.inline.css' %}" />
{% endblock extrahead %}

Sorting within Django-CMS is really only feasible for inline models of a plugin as Django-CMS already includes sorting for plugin instances. For tabular inlines, just substitute:

<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/admin.sortable.stacked.inlines.js' %}"></script>

with:

<script type="text/javascript" src="{% static 'adminsortable/js/admin.sortable.tabular.inlines.js' %}"></script>

Known Issue(s)

Because of the way inline models are added to their parent model in the change form, it is not currently possible to have sortable inline models whose parent does not inhert from Sortable. A workaround is currently being investigated.

Rationale

Other projects have added drag-and-drop ordering to the ChangeList view, however this introduces a couple of problems...

• The ChangeList view supports pagination, which makes drag-and-drop ordering across pages impossible.
• The ChangeList view by default, does not order records based on a foreign key, nor distinguish between rows that are associated with a foreign key. This makes ordering the records grouped by a foreign key impossible.
• The ChangeList supports in-line editing, and adding drag-and-drop ordering on top of that just seemed a little much in my opinion.

Status

django-admin-sortable is currently used in production.

What's new in 1.6.3?

• German localization - danke Alp-Phone
• JavaScript drag and drop handlers now work as expected if only Generic Inline models are present

Future

• Support for foreign keys that are self referential
• Move unit tests out of sample project (I could really use some help with this one)
• Travis CI integration

License

django-admin-sortable is released under the Apache Public License v2.