Django-Admin: CharField as TextArea

Question

I have

class Cab(models.Model):
    name  = models.CharField( max_length=20 )
    descr = models.CharField( max_length=2000 )

class Cab_Admin(admin.ModelAd         


        

Answer 1

For this case, the best option is probably just to use a TextField instead of CharField in your model. You can also override the formfield_for_dbfield method of your ModelAdmin class:

class CabAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def formfield_for_dbfield(self, db_field, **kwargs):
        formfield = super(CabAdmin, self).formfield_for_dbfield(db_field, **kwargs)
        if db_field.name == 'descr':
            formfield.widget = forms.Textarea(attrs=formfield.widget.attrs)
        return formfield

Answer 2

You don't need to create the form class yourself:

from django.contrib import admin
from django import forms

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def get_form(self, request, obj=None, **kwargs):
        kwargs['widgets'] = {'descr': forms.Textarea}
        return super().get_form(request, obj, **kwargs)

admin.site.register(MyModel, MyModelAdmin)

See ModelAdmin.get_form.

Answer 3

Instead of a models.CharField, use a models.TextField for descr.

Answer 4

Ayaz has pretty much spot on, except for a slight change(?!):

class MessageAdminForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Message
        widgets = {
            'text': forms.Textarea(attrs={'cols': 80, 'rows': 20}),
        }

class MessageAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    form = MessageAdminForm
admin.site.register(Message, MessageAdmin)

So, you don't need to redefine a field in the ModelForm to change it's widget, just set the widgets dict in Meta.

Answer 5

You can use models.TextField for this purpose:

class Sample(models.Model):
    field1 = models.CharField(max_length=128)
    field2 = models.TextField(max_length=1024*2)   # Will be rendered as textarea

Answer 6

If you are trying to change the Textarea on admin.py, this is the solution that worked for me:

from django import forms
from django.contrib import admin
from django.db import models
from django.forms import TextInput, Textarea

from books.models import Book

class BookForm(forms.ModelForm):
    description = forms.CharField( widget=forms.Textarea(attrs={'rows': 5, 'cols': 100}))
    class Meta:
        model = Book

class BookAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    form = BookForm

admin.site.register(Book, BookAdmin)

If you are using a MySQL DB, your column length will usually be autoset to 250 characters, so you will want to run an ALTER TABLE to change the length in you MySQL DB, so that you can take advantage of the new larger Textarea that you have in you Admin Django site.