Dynamic tabular inlines with optional drag-n-drop sorting

This jQuery javascript enables dynamic add/delete of rows in tabular inlines. It adds a "+" icon at the bottom of the inline to allow addition of new rows, and replaces the default delete checkbox with a "x" icon for deletion, giving you the possibility to add/delete rows instantly without reloading the page. In addition, it gives you drag-n-drop ordering functionality with a named position model field using jQuery UI Sortable. **Usage (see below for example):** Just include the javascript on your admin page, together with jQuery, and it'll automatically affect all tabular inlines. Optionally, also include jQuery UI Sortable and an Integer field in your inline model named "position" (or whatever you set "position_field" to), which will automatically hide the position field and enable drag-n-drop sorting. **Developed for:** * jQuery 1.3.2 * jQuery UI 1.7.1 * Django trunk (tested in Django v1.0.2) * (Might work with other versions with or without adjustments, but not tested) **Settings (in top of javascript):** * "position_field" is the name of an integer model field that is used for ordering the inline model. If left empty or not found, the drag-n-drop functionality is dropped. Defaults to "position". * "add_link_html" for custom look of "add"-buttons. Defaults to Django's built-in "+" image icon. * "delete_link_html" for custom look of "delete"-buttons. Defaults to Django's built-in "x" image icon. **Use example: ** *admin.py:* class NameInline(admin.TabularInline): model = Name extra = 1 class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin): inlines = [NameInline] class Media: js = ['js/jquery-1.3.2.min.js', 'js/ui/ui.core.js', 'js/ui/ui.sortable.js', 'js/dynamic_inlines_with_sort.js',] css = { 'all' : ['css/dynamic_inlines_with_sort.css'], } admin.site.register(Person, PersonAdmin) *models.py:* class Person(models.Model): year_born = models.PositiveIntegerField(_('year born'), null=True, blank=True) class Name(models.Model): profile = models.ForeignKey(Profile, verbose_name=_('profile')) position = models.PositiveIntegerField(_('position'), default=0) name = models.CharField(_('name'), max_length=100) class Meta: ordering = ('position',) *dynamic_inlines_with_sort.css:* /* To make row height of saved items same as others */ .inline-group .tabular tr.has_original td { padding-top:0.5em; } .inline-group .tabular tr.has_original td.original p { display:none; } Please post bugs in comments.

• javascript
• dynamic
• admin
• sort
• jquery
• ordering
• inlines
• inline
• tabular
• sortable

Tue 27 Dec 2011 Read More

Dynamic Form Class

Nutshell: Subclass this form with the required fields defined to automatically generate a form based on a model in a similar fashion to how form_for_model works, but in a way that tries to be a little easier if you want to customize the form. It handles updates and creations automatically as long as any database field requirements are met. This is something I made while trying to understand newforms, and is my own attempt at something between the simplicity of a stock form_for_model form, and a full blown custom form. The proper way is to use a callback function to customize form_for_model, but that felt cumbersome so I did it my way :) It works for me, but I'm relatively new to both python and Django so please test yourself before trusting.

• dynamic
• forms
• subclass

Sun 11 Jul 2010 Read More

ForeignKey dropdown selector

Most of the time when you want a dropdown selector based on a ForeignKey, you'll want to use [snippet #26](http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/26/) Here's an alternative approach, perhaps useful when you want to define choices once and reuse it in different views without overriding Form `__init__`.

• dynamic
• foreignkey
• dropdown
• choices
• property

Sun 11 Jul 2010 Read More

Complex Formsets, Redux

Background ========== Two years ago, Malcolm Tredinnick put up an excellent post about doing dynamic Django forms. There have been several excellent write-ups on it since - Google is your friend. One year ago, I attempted to make a dynamic Formset - see [this snippet](http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/1290/). Malcolm posted a cleaner solution two weeks later, and I liked his solution better. Some time after that happened, his site tanked. I'm re-posting my snippet using his technique, so that everyone can see how it is done. Credit to goes to Malcolm - I'm just the messenger. If his site ever comes back up , check out his complex formset post [here](http://www.pointy-stick.com/blog/2009/01/23/advanced-formset-usage-django/). I'll use Malcolm's example code, with as few changes as possible to use a formset. The models and form don't change, and the template is almost identical. I won't reproduce all of Malcolm's code - I'm just show the form setup. There are no models here - you'll have to use your imagination for Quiz, Question, and Answer models. He did some fancy validation as well - I'm not going to here. Problem ======= Build a formset based on dynamically created forms. Solution ======== The core idea in this code is found in the `_construct_form` method. Typically, this is where a formset makes new forms - it handles indexing them so that everything is nice and unique. We can take advantage of this by overriding the method and inserting a `kwarg` that will be passed on to our form class, then calling the parent `_contruct_form` method to let it finish doing everything else for us. This is what Malcolm, a core Django developer, knows about, and I, a random Django user, typically do not. Code ==== This pattern greatly simplifies building formsets dynamically, and it really only requires a few bits of knowledge. 1. If we `pop()` special arguments out of `kwargs` dictionaries, we then can pass the remaining `kwargs` along to parent methods and let them do the rest of the setup for us. See code tricks #1 and #3. 2. If we have a form and need to add dynamic fields that we didn't declare the usual way, we can just add them to the `self.fields` dictionary. See code trick #2. 3. If we need to add forms dynamically to a formset, we can use the `self.extra` variable to specify how many we want, based on the length of a custom queryset. See code trick #4. 4. If we want to pass some special arguments to a form that will be part of a formset when it is constructed, we can add them to the `kwargs` dict in `_construct_form`, taking advantage of the `index` variable to track which object from our queryset we wanted. See code trick #5.

• dynamic
• formset
• complex

Thu 13 Feb 2014 Read More

Javascript Chain Select Widget

This widget will render a chained select menu powered by JavaScript to make it easier to identify foreign keys. This widget includes danjak's form decorator (http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/59/), and Xin Yang's chained select javascript functions (http://www.yxscripts.com/). I developed this to be used with an IT inventory system. See screenshot here: http://bayimg.com/cAjAGAabN The models are laid out that location -> area -> room. But the __str__ of area and room did not include unique fields, so the built-in single select box that django uses for ForeignKey's did not work for me. A few notes: 1: I will not be maintaining this, I am only putting it out here in case it helps others. 2: The chained select menus will only be available to the first form on the page. Reason being: the template names the form, not the django backend. So, I had to reference the form in javascript as document.forms[0]. 3: Due to the javascript processing, the chain select menu will not show current values other than the default specified in the javascript. Thus, form_for_instance and a dict of values passed to form_for_model will not pre-set the chained select. 4: The rendered selects are put into a vertical table. No other layout is supported. 5: The select field names for upper-leveled options are "chain_to_[destination_field_name]__[current_selects_model_name]. 6: The select name for the destination option is the name that django sends internally, which is usually the field name. The value of each option in the select is the primary key associated with that object. 7: I tried to get this built in to the native form_for_model helper function for use with the default admin site, but failed miserably. How to get it working (quick version): 1: Define your models 2: From your view, import the form_decorator and ChainSelectWidget (I put them in CustomWidgets.py and made sure it was in the path). 3: Build arguments for the form_decorator eg: widget_overwrite=dict(field=ChainSelectWidget(order=[(top, 'order_field'), (next, 'order_field'), (field, 'order_field)] 4: Send arguments to form_decorator eg: callback = form_decorator(widgets=widget_overwrite) 5: Build modified form eg: mod_formclass = form_for_model(field, formfield_callback=callback) 6: Instance the modified form eg: instanced_form = mod_formclass() 7: Send instanced form to the templating engine 8: From the template, import the chainedselects function file (replace [] with <>) eg: [head][script language="javascript" src="path/to/chainedselects.js"][/script] 9: Display the form object as you normally would.

• javascript
• dynamic
• widgets
• select
• widget
• js
• java
• chain

Sun 11 Jul 2010 Read More

Dynamic Models Revisited

Somebody mentioned in #django the other day that they have multiple databases with the same schema... Well *lucky me* so do I!! This is one way to work with this issue. I've also included migrate_table_structure just in case the schema doesn't exist in the new database yet. As per the multiple-db-support branch, write all of your databases into the OTHER_DATABASES in settings.py. You can now copy models from your various models.py files and use them in different databases at the same time. This can also be used to migrate databases from one dialect to the other without having to translate your data into an interim format (e.g. csv, XML). You can just do: qs = MyModel.objects.filter(**filters) NewModel = duplicate_model_and_rels(MyModel, 'new_db') #Assuming that the schema is already in new_db: for mod in qs: new = NewModel() new.__dict__ = mod.__dict__ new.save() I tried this using some hacks with SQLAlchemy, and the above approach is a huge amount quicker! I've used this to copy some stuff from an oracle db, into a sqlite db so i could carry on working later and transferred about 20,000 in 5 mins or so. GOTCHAS ======== This only works against my copy of multi-db as I've made a couple of changes. My copy is substantially the same as my patch attached to ticket 4747 though, so it might work to a point (especially the data migration aspect). If it doesn't work hit me up and I'll send you my patch against trunk. I'm not too crazy about the code in copy_field, it works fine, but looks ugly... If anyone knows of a better way to achieve the same, please let me know.

• dynamic
• multi-db
• copy

Mon 08 Oct 2012 Read More

Drop in dynamic formsets in admin

A very plugable way to get Stanislaus jquery dynamic formset working in the admin with adding just one template. Add the following to templates/admin/APP/MODEL/change_form.html and also update the MODEL in the prefix setting. Thanks Stanislaus [http://elo80ka.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/jquery-plugin-django-dynamic-formset/](http://elo80ka.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/jquery-plugin-django-dynamic-formset/) [http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=elo80ka.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcode.google.com%2Fp%2Fdjango-dynamic-formset%2F](http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=elo80ka.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcode.google.com%2Fp%2Fdjango-dynamic-formset%2F) [http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/1389/](http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/1389/)

• dynamic
• admin
• jquery
• inlines
• formsets

Mon 04 Oct 2010 Read More

Render dynamically assigned fields in a template

**Problem:** You want to render an arbitrary number of fields assigned dynamically, as in [snippet #27](http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/27/), but using multiple `if` statements in a template would be tedious. **Solution:** newforms BoundField The example demonstrates a form with medication fields. We don't know in advance how many meds will be prescribed to a patient, but we want to display a minimum of 4 medication fields, each consisting of a label, name, and dosage. My code uses a cheap hack of assigning a .bf attribute to the fields during __init__, but it's easy to render in a template loop: `{% for med in form.med_list %}` *Special thanks to Honza for advice on BoundField.*

• template
• dynamic
• boundfield
• render

Sun 11 Jul 2010 Read More

Dynamic import from an installed app

This is an example how to dynamically import modules other than `models.py` from installed apps. It allows you to define the full module path just once in `INSTALLED_APPS` in the settings. Using this technique makes it possible to write extensible and reusable apps as mentioned in [Abstract Models and Dynamicly Assigned Foreign Keys](http://djangotricks.blogspot.com/2009/02/abstract-models-and-dynamicly-assigned.html). Probably, it would be great to have some helpers for doing this in django itself. For example: from django.db import models from django.utils import importlib def import_installed(path): """ Imports a module from an installed app >>> import_installed("myapp.forms") <module 'myproject.apps.myapp.forms'> """ app_name, module = path.split(".", 1) app = models.get_app(app_name) return importlib.import_module(app.__name__[:-6] + module) UPDATE: Reported as ticket [#10703](http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/10703)

• dynamic
• import

Thu 18 Oct 2012 Read More

Decorator to ease dynamic redirections in Django

I often use it so I hope it helps! Usage: urlpatterns = patterns('', url(r'^nav/$', redirect('/navigation/')), url(r'^search/(?P<category_name>\w+)/$', redirect('/documents/%(category_name)s/')), and so on... ) It keeps GET arguments too.

• dynamic
• decorator
• redirect

Sun 11 Jul 2010 Read More

Lazily lookup dynamically for templates

If you've ever wanted to dynamically lookup values in the template layer (e.g. `dictionary[bar]`), then you've probably realized/been told to do this in the python layer. The problem is then you often to build a huge 2-D list to hold all of that data. These are two solutions to this problem: by using generators we can be lazy while still making it easy in the python layer. I'm going to write more documentation later, but here's a quick example: from lazy_lookup import lazy_lookup_dict def some_view(request): users = User.objects.values('id', 'username') articles = Article.objects.values('user', 'title', 'body') articles = dict([(x['user'], x) for x in articles]) return render_to_response('some_template.html', {'data': lazy_lookup_dict(users, key=lambda x: x['id'], article=articles, item_name='user')}) Then in the template layer you'd write something like: {% for user_data in data %} {{ user_data.user.username }}, {{ user_data.article.title }} {% endfor %}

• template
• dynamic
• lookup
• lazy
• dynamic-lookup

Fri 30 Nov 2012 Read More

assign fields dynamically in newforms

DynamicFieldSnippetForm demonstrates how to dynamically assign fields in newforms. 1. weight is a required static field 2. height is an optional dynamic field This example uses `request_height` as an optional keyword argument to declare whether the `height` field should be added to the form, but it's just there for demonstration purposes. If you decide to use a keyword argument in your code, be sure to pop it off (as demonstrated in the code) or you'll get an *unexpected keyword argument* error.

• newforms
• dynamic
• fields

Sun 11 Jul 2010 Read More

superSearch function for generating large OR queries

superSearch is intended to make it easier to make complex OR queries, thusly hitting the database less. EXAMPLE: Searching for a user named 'Eric Neuman' would be difficult because first_name and last_name are separate fields. However, with superSearch, it's a breeze. query = ['Eric Neuman'] f = ['first_name','last_name'] s = query.split(' ') m = ['icontains'] results = superSearch(User, f, m,s)

• dynamic
• q
• query
• kwargs

Thu 09 Sep 2010 Read More

Dynamic Django settings context processor

Here's a nice way of easily passing only certain settings variables to the template. Because of the way Django looks up context processors, we need a little hack with sys.modules. The [blog entry is here](http://sciyoshi.com/blog/2008/jul/10/dynamic-django-settings-context-processor/).

• dynamic
• settings
• context
• processor

Mon 21 Feb 2011 Read More

Dynamically Import a Module (and return it)

`foo = dynamic_import ( 'rawr.i.am.a.lion' )` Will import `lion` from `rawr.i.am.a` and return it. (This isn't really Django specific) Props to Crast for the original.

• dynamic
• module

Sun 11 Jul 2010 Read More