How to make a field non-editable in Flask Admin view of a model class

Question

I have a User model class and password is one attribute among many. I am using Flask web framework and Flask-Admin extension to create the admin view o

Answer 1

Here is a solution that expands upon Remo's answer and this so answer. It allows for different field_args for edit and create forms.

Custom Field Rule Class

from flask_admin.form.rules import Field

class CustomizableField(Field):
    def __init__(self, field_name, render_field='lib.render_field', field_args={}):
        super(CustomizableField, self).__init__(field_name, render_field)
        self.extra_field_args = field_args

    def __call__(self, form, form_opts=None, field_args={}):
        field_args.update(self.extra_field_args)
        return super(CustomizableField, self).__call__(form, form_opts, field_args)

UserView Class

class UserView(ModelView):

    column_list = ('first_name', 'last_name', 'username', 'email')
    searchable_columns = ('username', 'email')

    # this is to exclude the password field from list_view:
    excluded_list_columns = ['password']
    can_create = True
    can_delete = False

    # If you want to make them not editable in form view: use this piece:
    form_edit_rules = [
        CustomizableField('name', field_args={
            'readonly': True
        }),
        # ... place other rules here
    ]

Answer 2

You should extend your view from ModelView and overwrite the necessary fields.

In my class it looks like this:

class UserView(ModelView):

    column_list = ('first_name', 'last_name', 'username', 'email')
    searchable_columns = ('username', 'email')
# this is to exclude the password field from list_view:
    excluded_list_columns = ['password']
    can_create = True
    can_delete = False
# If you want to make them not editable in form view: use this piece:
    form_widget_args = {
        'name': {
            'readonly': True
        },
    }

Hope this helps! For more information check out the documentation:

• Flask-Admin Documentation
• Model View Documentation

Answer 3

Yet another way to work the problem around is to use Flask-Admin ModelView method called on_form_prefill to set readonly property argument. According to Flask-Admin Docs:

on_form_prefill(form, id)

Perform additional actions to pre-fill the edit form.

Called from edit_view, if the current action is rendering the form rather than receiving client side input, after default pre-filling has been performed.

In other words, this is a trigger, which is run when opening only Edit form, not the Create one.

So, the solution for the example used above would be:

class UserView(ModelView):
    ...
    def on_form_prefill(self, form, id):
        form.name.render_kw = {'readonly': True}

The method is run after all other rules applied, so none of them are broken, including set of columns.