Is there a way to get custom Django admin actions to appear on the “change” view in addition to the “change list” view?

Question

I thought for whatever reason this would be easy to do, but I looked deeper and it appears there is no straightforward way to allow users to execute custom admin actions on the

Answer 1

Here's what I ended up doing.

First, I extended the change_view of the ModelAdmin object as follows:

def change_view(self, request, object_id, extra_context=None):
    actions = self.get_actions(request)
    if actions:
        action_form = self.action_form(auto_id=None)
        action_form.fields['action'].choices = self.get_action_choices(request)
    else:
        action_form = None
    changelist_url = urlresolvers.reverse('admin:checkout_order_changelist')
    return super(OrderAdmin, self).change_view(request, object_id, extra_context={
        'action_form': action_form,
        'changelist_url': changelist_url
    })

Basically we're just gathering the data needed to populate the actions dropdown on the change view.

Then I just extended change_form.html for the model in question:

{% extends "admin/change_form.html" %}
{% load i18n adminmedia admin_list %}

{% block extrastyle %}
  {{ block.super }}
  
{% endblock %}

{% block object-tools %}
    {{ block.super }}
    

    
{% csrf_token %}
        {% admin_actions %}
        
    
    
{% endblock %}

This is almost identical to how the admin actions section is outputted on the change list view. The main differences are: 1) I had to specify a URL for the form to post to, 2) instead of a checkbox to specify which object(s) should be changed, the value is set via a hidden form field, and 3) I included the CSS for the change list view, and stuck the actions in a div with id of #changelist -- just so the box would look halfway decent.

Not a great solution, but it works okay and requires no additional configuration for additional actions you might add.