Question

So I’ve set up my django site with the following admin.py:

import models
from django.contrib import admin
admin.site.register(models.Comment)

which uses this models.py:

from django.db import models
class Comment(models.Model):
    text = models.CharField(max_length=400)
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now = True)
    article = models.CharField(max_length=100)

However, when I go to the admin page, it shows the following:

Which generally is not very helpful. Clicking on each link gives me a page with that object’s data, but I would like to be able to see the information for each object in this view. I’ve been looking at the ModelAdmin class at:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/admin/

but have not managed to wrap my head around it. Is it a separate model class that needs to be kept in sync with my “actual” model? Is it just an interface through which my Admin site accesses the actual model? Does it do what I want (allowing useful data to be shown in the admin interface) or does it do something else?

I’m thinking that the Django Admin page should be able to replace PHPMyAdmin for doing simple tasks, like browsing the DB and manually modifying individual objects. Is that the case?

Answer 1

Just as it says in the documentation, your model’s ModelAdmin describes how the admin section will represent your model. It does need to be somewhat in sync with the actual model, it doesn’t make sense for you to display fields that aren’t present on your model, etc. You seem interested in the changelist view, which has numerous customization options (all described in the documentation, and in the tutorial). A simple start might be:

from django.contrib import admin

class CommentAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    # define which columns displayed in changelist
    list_display = ('text', 'name', 'date', 'article')
    # add filtering by date
    list_filter = ('date',)
    # add search field 
    search_fields = ['text', 'article']

admin.site.register(Comment, CommentAdmin)

There are a lot of options for customization, as always refer to the docs! Finally, you could certainly use it in lieu of PHPMyAdmin, it’s very easy to setup admin for browsing, modifying object, etc, how much use you get out of it is up to you.