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

You will have to create a forms.ModelForm that will describe how you want the descr field to be displayed, and then tell admin.ModelAdmin to use that form. For example:

from django import forms
class CabModelForm( forms.ModelForm ):
    descr = forms.CharField( widget=forms.Textarea )
    class Meta:
        model = Cab

class Cab_Admin( admin.ModelAdmin ):
    form = CabModelForm

The form attribute of admin.ModelAdmin is documented in the official Django documentation. Here is one place to look at.

Answer 2

Wanted to expand on Carl Meyer's answer, which works perfectly till this date.

I always use TextField instead of CharField (with or without choices) and impose character limits on UI/API side rather than at DB level. To make this work dynamically:

from django import forms
from django.contrib import admin


class BaseAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    """
    Base admin capable of forcing widget conversion
    """
    def formfield_for_dbfield(self, db_field, **kwargs):
        formfield = super(BaseAdmin, self).formfield_for_dbfield(
            db_field, **kwargs)

        display_as_charfield = getattr(self, 'display_as_charfield', [])
        display_as_choicefield = getattr(self, 'display_as_choicefield', [])

        if db_field.name in display_as_charfield:
            formfield.widget = forms.TextInput(attrs=formfield.widget.attrs)
        elif db_field.name in display_as_choicefield:
            formfield.widget = forms.Select(choices=formfield.choices,
                                            attrs=formfield.widget.attrs)

        return formfield

I have a model name Post where title, slug & state are TextFields and state has choices. The admin definition looks like:

@admin.register(Post)
class PostAdmin(BaseAdmin):
    list_display = ('pk', 'title', 'author', 'org', 'state', 'created',)
    search_fields = [
        'title',
        'author__username',
    ]
    display_as_charfield = ['title', 'slug']
    display_as_choicefield = ['state']

Thought others looking for answers might find this useful.

Answer 3

You can subclass your own field with needed formfield method:

class CharFieldWithTextarea(models.CharField):

    def formfield(self, **kwargs):
        kwargs.update({"widget": forms.Textarea})
        return super(CharFieldWithTextarea, self).formfield(**kwargs)

This will take affect on all generated forms.