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Django editable dropdown field [duplicate]

We have some models that are have a user as a foreign key. But with about 25000 users in our system, it's a bit daunting to find the one we need.
Is there a solution out there that's better than the select box? Maybe an autocomplete so we can start typing the user name / address? Or just a search box? When switching the related user for these objects, it's getting harder and harder with 25000 unsorted users.
Even just setting it to sort the users by username would be helpful.

I had this problem and my conclusion was to use an autocomplete field instead. It works pretty well in most cases. The only problem is when you have a lot of entries that are mostly the same. For example, in your case, if you type Robert for the name and there's a few hundred Robert entries in the list...
UPDATE
As mentions in shuckc's answer, Django 2.0+ admin as now autocomplete built in.
For older Django or to use outside of the admin (old answer)
There are many apps that add autocomplete to the Django admin:
django-autocomplete-light
django-extensions (ForeignKeyAutocompleteAdmin)
django-autocomplete (on google code)
django-ajax-selects
django-admin-autocomplete
django-autocomplete (tyrion)
My preferred one is the last one. It's well written, it can be used with the admin and outside of the admin, it works with ManyToManyFields, ForeignKeyFields, CharFields, etc.
I did a fork of this project for my client that adds some niceties like a lookup (loupe) button like the ForeignKeyRawIdWidget.

Django 2.0 admin has autocomplete built in, just set the autocomplete_fields field on the ModelAdmin class. e.g.
class QuestionAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
ordering = ['date_created']
search_fields = ['question_text']
class ChoiceAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
autocomplete_fields = ['question']

The simplest out-of-the-box solution is to add the field to your ModelAdmin's raw_id_fields -- then you'll get a pop-up window in which you can use the built-in searching/filtering and pagination control's to find and select the object you're after.
If you really want autocomplete, the other answers give a you reasonable starting point.

You can use the ForeignKeyRawIdWidget from django.contrib.admin.widgets. It renders FK relations as an input with a small button along-side which presents a searchable pop up.

There is an app for that (django-autocomplete).

Custom Django Database Frontend

I have been trying to get my head around Django over the last week or two. Its slowly starting to make some sense and I am really liking it.
My goal is to replace a fairly messy excel spreadsheet with a database and frontend for my users. This would involve pulling the data out of a table, presenting it in a web tabular format, and allowing changes to be made through text fields and drop down menus, with a simple update button that will update all changes to the DB.
My question is, will the built in Django Forms functionality be the best solution? Or would I create some sort of for loop for my objects and wrap them around html form syntax in my template? I'm just not too sure how to approach the solution.
Apologies if this seems like an simple question, I just feel like there is maybe a few ways to do it but maybe there is one perfect way.
Thanks

The fastest way not to implement you own pages and to have a tabular view of your data is to use the django's built-in admin interface. It gives you sorting, filtering and search functionality and quick to start. You just need to define your models in models.py and setup the admin pages as described in the docs.
Normally the admin page is not used as a representation to users or customers but in the case you described it seems a clean and quick choice.

Exporting the excel sheet in Django and have the them rendered as text fields , is not as easy as 2 step process.
you need to know how Django works.
First you need to export the data in mysql in database using either some language or some ready made tools.
Then you need to make a Model for that table and then you can use Django admin to edit them

How to have a change list in django that filters by a field having a relation?

Suppose I have two models:
class Blog(models.Model):
pass
class Article(models.Model):
blog = models.ForeignKey(Blog, related_name="articles")
I want to filter only blogs that have an article. The filter would be something like this:
Blog.objects.annotate(article_count=models.Count('articles')).filter(article_count__gt=0)
How can I have the change list at the admin filter like this?
I tried a few approaches, like custom filterspecs, but had no success.
The best solution was to use a proxy model and register a separated admin list, like this solution:
Multiple ModelAdmins/views for same model in Django admin
But that doesn't work very well with the permission system.
Any ideas?

There's currently no way, aside from some very painful hacks, to accomplish that. Django 1.4 will ship with the ability to create custom filterspecs (see: https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/5833), which will allow you to do stuff like this.
Since this seems to be kind of an edge case (really, how many blogs will ever have zero posts for a significant period of time?) My suggestion would be to just hold out for now, and maybe look into upgrading once 1.4 is released.
If you insist on going down the rabbit hole, you can start here: Custom Filter in Django Admin on Django 1.3 or below

Django AdminSite - Difficult or Easy Implementation?

Has anyone implemented their own AdminSite? How easy/hard was the basic implementation?
I'm in the midst of building a "cms" that's going to be quite large and decently complex in some areas and I'm wondering if using something like AdminSite would save some time. I'd rather not have to make my own implementation for admin actions and inlines and the like (I know I can just use inline forms but that's not as simple as inlines = [Foo]).
When using a custom AdminSite, is further customization equivalent to customizing the standard Django admin?

You've read the admin site docs. It's a lengthy document, but two main hooks for adding custom functionality is through custom urls and modified standard views in your own AdminSite and ModelAdmin objects. Once you hook those in and the urls get mapped, it's just like building any other Django application, only that the templates aren't yours, so they're are a bit hard to manage and take getting used to. But it allows you to do additional gymnastics, like adding a form wizard to the admin site or splitting everything into multiple forms and rendering them in a single HTML form element in the templates, doing custom handling of GET/POST requests, etc.
I've used it in the past to create views for displaying custom reports and to create custom editing scenarios for the staff. My opinion is that you should KISS as much as possible. The admin site is all about generic views and generic presentation. Do expand, but be cautious if you override template blocks and think twice before you override something that's not wrapped in a block. Certain admin site features have certain presentation assumptions and the JS client app that's shipped with Django makes some too (that's what I've figured when working with adding dynamic inline models way back), so it'd be quite an undertaking if you'd like to roll a completely different presentation.
The answer in any case is YES! The admin site will provide you with more features for managing your model data interactively. I don't know how extensively you'd need to customize the admin, but there are CMSs, dedicated admin apps and admin integrated apps that are a real eye-opener. Django CMS, as I recalled, has been praised as the best open-source Django CMS out there and from what I can see it rolls it's own cust change/list views. Rosetta is an admin site only app that allows you to edit your translation files interactively and has an exhaustive admin interface! If you shop around on bitbucket and github you'll find many more examples, it should help you figure out best how much effort you'd need to put into it.

Both
If you are OK with it not doing exactly what you want its pretty much done for you automatically. If you need fine grain control over certain things it can be hard to customize without knowing the internals of the admin code.

the django admin is more of a one size fits all kind of ui which may not be intuitive for use in some cases ..
customizing its look is easy but extending it is some how hard. you are better off designing your own views in that case.

Django web interface components

I am using python and django and like it a lot. But than i use it, I catch myself thinking
what i do a lot of work to render result data and write specific actions for it. For example than i pass result set of objects to template
i must render all data and write all possible actions such as sorting by columns,filtering,deletion,edit etc, for each of this i need
to write code in urls.py and views.py, sometimes helps generic view but it's has poor functions.
Is there some solutions to automate this work?
i mean use some interface compontents (such as "model list renderer with column filter and pagination") to wich i need only
"bind my model", all other routing work for drawing common interface action must be allready implemented in these components.
i think i need something like configurable components for fast building html web interface for models (such as model forms do fast generation forms for models).
What do you think can help in this case?

must render all data and write all
possible actions such as sorting by
columns,filtering,deletion,edit etc
Like django.contrib.admin? But I guess it's way to complicated and bloated for your needs.
sometimes helps generic view but it's
has poor functions
And that's the way, I think, you should be going. If you write same views over and over again, just make your own generic views. As an example of more robust views and a source of inspiration I recommend you to look at class-based generic views.
Also consider using model inheritance and custom managers.