Django admin search: how to override the default handler?

Question

I wish to customize the way in which search queries across the search_fields.

Is there a way to do it without hacking deeply into the Django code or creating a totally i

Answer 1

So I have been using the code from WeizhongTu's answer and found a not-so-obvious error in it. When we try to use both filtering and searching with this code, filtering is shadowed by this line:

queryset = self.model.objects.filter(eval(query_condition))

It is important to use the previous results ONLY. So you must never use self.model.objects to obtain the queryset, but only filter the queryset itself. Like this:

def get_search_results(self, request, queryset, search_term):
    # search_term is what you input in admin site
    # queryset is the list of objects passed to you
    # by the previous functions, e. g. filtering 
    search_term_list = search_term.split(' ') #['apple','bar']
    search_columns = ('name','age','address')
    # convert to Q(name='apple') | Q(name='bar') | Q(age='apple') | ...
    query_condition = ' | '.join(['Q(%s="%s")'%(x,y) for x in search_term_list for y in search_columns])
    appended_queryset = queryset.filter(eval(query_condition))
    # queryset is search results
    queryset, use_distinct = super(PersonAdmin, self).get_search_results(request, queryset, search_term)
    queryset |= appended_queryset
    return queryset, use_distinct