Making Django admin display the Primary Key rather than each object's Object type

Question

In Django 1.1 admin, when I go to add or change an object, my objects are displayed as:

Select host to change
    * Add host

    Host object
    Host object
            


        

Answer 1

Add a __unicode__() method to Host. To show the primary key of your host objects, you'd want something like:

class Host(models.Model):
    host = models.CharField(max_length=100, primary_key=True)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.pk

    ...

You might want to think about showing the contents of the host field:

class Host(models.Model):
    host = models.CharField(max_length=100, primary_key=True)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.host

    ...

You'll need to do something similar for every model you've got.

For Python 3 compatibility, you'll want to do something like this (see the documentation):

from __future__ import unicode_literals
from django.utils.encoding import python_2_unicode_compatible

@python_2_unicode_compatible
class Host(models.Model):
    host = models.CharField(max_length=100, primary_key=True)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.host

    ...