Chapter 11: Modifications in Django admin

Missing date and time fields

From the last chapter, we had a functioning Django admin site that shows our model's fields except for survey_date and survey_time. Apparently, if one uses the auto_add_new parameter in their DateTime and TimeField fields, or even DateTimeField for that matter, the date and time fields will automatically be added when the object is created for the first time. They will also be uneditable. However, they will not appear in the Django Admin.

What shall we do yet the date and time is important to know when the survey was being conducted?

Date and time fields in Django Admin

There is a work around to the above problem. We will make the date and time fields editable but they will by default be set at the current date and time by default.

In your australia/models.py, change the survey_date and survey_time fields to match as below:

from datetime import date
from django.utils import timezone

--snip-- 
survey_date = models.DateField(default=date.today)

survey_time = models.TimeField(default=timezone.localtime)

--snip--

This sets the survey_date to use the current date and for the survey_time to use the current time at our local timezone.

Let's define our timezone in settings.py.

TIME_ZONE = 'Africa/Nairobi'

Feel free to use your local timezone as contained in this list of timezones.

Modify the admin.py

In our first instance of creating models, we simply used the pass keyword to capture all fields defined by our QuestionnaireAdmin class.

class QuestionnaireAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    pass

How about if you want to arrange the order in which your model fields appear in Django Admin?

You can do so by creating a list under your ModelAdmin, in this case QuestionnaireAdmin like below.

class QuestionnaireAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    # pass 
    fields = ("survey_date", "survey_time", "territory", "area",)

This will display the fields in our DjangoAdmin as survey_date, survey_time, territory, and area in that order.

Migrate the model

Now that we've made changes to our model, it's time we tell Django to make updates to our database schema.

First run python3 manage.py makemigrations australia to tell Django to make records of the updates but limited to the australia app only.

Migrations for 'australia':
  australia/migrations/0007_alter_questionnaire_survey_time.py
    ~ Alter field survey_time on questionnaire

Thereafter, run python3 manage.py migrate australia to tell Django to apply the modifications in our database schema but restricted to those of the australia app only.

Operations to perform:
  Apply all migrations: australia
Running migrations:
  Applying australia.0007_alter_questionnaire_survey_time... OK

Once done, run python3 manage.py runserver. Go to http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin.

Go to the Questionnaire button under your Australia application name. Click on any previous response, say Questionnaire object (1).

Click on it. You will see the date and time at which the question was set. This is because according to the Django documentation, the auto_add_now parameter sets the date and time to when the object was first created.

If you add a question, you will notice that the survey_date as Survey date and survey_time as Survey time appear and are by default set to your local time. But notice they are also editable as well. The time is set to the TIME_ZONE variable you set in the settings.py file.

If you hit SAVE the question will be saved with the date and time you've specified.