In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:
- Customizing admin
- Enhancing models for the admin
- Admin best practices
- Feature flags
Django's much discussed admin interface makes it stand apart from the competition. It is a built-in app that automatically generates a user interface to add and modify a site's content. For many, the admin is Django's killer app, automating the boring task of creating admin interfaces for the models in your project.
Admin enables your team to add content and continue development at the same time. Once your models are ready and migrations have been applied, you just need to add a line or two to create its admin interface. Let's see how.
In Django 1.7, the admin interface is enabled by default. After creating your project, you will be able to see a login page when you navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/.
If you enter the superuser credentials (or credentials of any staff user), you will be logged into the admin interface, as shown in the following screenshot:
However, your models will not be visible here, unless you define a corresponding ModelAdmin class. This is usually defined in your app's admin.py as follows:
from django.contrib import admin from . import models admin.site.register(models.SuperHero)
Here, the second argument to register, a ModelAdmin class, has been omitted. Hence, we will get a default admin interface for the Post model. Let's see how to create and customize this ModelAdmin class.
Note
The Beacon
"Having coffee?" asked a voice from the corner of the pantry. Sue almost spilled her coffee. A tall man wearing a tight red and blue colored costume stood smiling with hands on his hips. The logo emblazoned on his chest said in large type—Captain Obvious.
"Oh, my god," said Sue as she wiped the coffee stain with a napkin. "Sorry, I think I scared you," said Captain Obvious "What is the emergency?"
"Isn't it obvious that she doesn't know?" said a calm feminine voice from above. Sue looked up to find a shadowy figure slowly descend from the open hall. Her face was partially obscured by her dark matted hair that had a few grey streaks. "Hi Hexa!" said the Captain "But then, what was the message on SuperBook about?"
Soon, they were all at Steve's office staring at his screen. "See, I told you there is no beacon on the front page," said Evan. "We are still developing that feature." "Wait," said Steve. "Let me login through a non-staff account."
In a few seconds, the page refreshed and an animated red beacon prominently appeared at the top. "That's the beacon I was talking about!" exclaimed Captain Obvious. "Hang on a minute," said Steve. He pulled up the source files for the new features deployed earlier that day. A glance at the beacon feature branch code made it clear what went wrong:
if switch_is_active(request, 'beacon') and not request.user.is_staff():
# Display the beacon"Sorry everyone," said Steve. "There has been a logic error. Instead of turning this feature on only for staff, we inadvertently turned it on for everyone but staff. It is turned off now. Apologies for any confusion."
"So, there was no emergency?" said Captain with a disappointed look. Hexa put an arm on his shoulder and said "I am afraid not, Captain." Suddenly, there was a loud crash and everyone ran to the hallway. A man had apparently landed in the office through one of the floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Shaking off shards of broken glass, he stood up. "Sorry, I came as fast as I could," he said, "Am I late to the party?" Hexa laughed. "No, Blitz. Been waiting for you to join," she said.