Can I add a search box to a Django Admin Add page?

Question

In a Django 3.0 app, I have a Donor Model with a foreign key to the donor's congressional district:

# models.py
class Donor(models.Model):
    """A class to represent an individual donor"""
    
    name = models.CharField(
        help_text = "Donor's name"
    )
    district = models.ForeignKey(
        District,
        help_text = "Donor's congressional district"
    )

class District(models.Model):
    """A class to represent a U.S. congressional district"""
    
    dist_name = models.CharField(
        help_text = "District name"
    )

In the Admin Add page for Donor, there's a drop-down selection menu for District. The problem is that there are 435 congressional districts in the U.S. That's an awful lot to scroll through each time I add a Donor, so I'd like to add a search box.

Django has the ability to define search fields. I tried to do so:

# admin.py

@admin.register(Donor)
class DonorAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    search_fields = ['district']

This did not affect the Donor Add page. 'District' still shows up as an enormous drop-down, and there are no search features anywhere on the page.

The search_fields documentation says specifically

Set search_fields to enable a search box on the admin change list page.

Emphasis mine: search_fields seems to apply to only the Change List page, not the Add page. I assume this is why my attempt didn't work.

Is it possible to add a search box to a Django Admin Add page?

rparente · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-05 20:16:21Z

1

Yes, you can add a search box to Django admin pages.

Add this to your admin class:

search_fields = ['name', 'author',.......] #add the fields you want to search

And the search box it will appear

answered Sep 5, 2022 at 20:16

rparente

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Comments

Chymdy · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-14 06:51:07Z

0

No you can't add a search box to django admin pages.

answered Mar 14, 2021 at 6:51

Chymdy

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2 Comments

Darien Marks Over a year ago

Thanks for a direct response. Can you point me toward any documentation or other information that would let me verify this?

Chymdy Over a year ago

I will when I get or see one.

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