Adding model-wide help text to a django model's admin form

Question

In my django app, I would like to be able to add customized help text to the admin change form for some of my models. Note I'm not talking about the field specific help_text attribute that I can set on individual fields. For example, at the top of the change form for My_Model in My_App I'd like to be able to add some HTML that says "For additional information about My Model, see http://example.com" in order to provide a link to an internal documentation wiki.

Is there any simple way of accomplishing this, or do I need to create a custom admin form for the model? If so, can you give me an example of how I would do that?

Answer 1

There is a fairly simple, yet underdocumented way of accomplishing this.

Define render_change_form in the Admin class

First, you need to pass extra context to your admin. To do this, you can define a render_change_form function within your admin Class, e.g.:

# admin.py
class CustomAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def render_change_form(self, request, context, *args, **kwargs):
        # here we define a custom template
        self.change_form_template = 'admin/myapp/change_form_help_text.html'
        extra = {
            'help_text': "This is a help message. Good luck filling out the form."
        }
        
        context.update(extra)
        return super().render_change_form(request, context, *args, **kwargs)

Creating a custom template

Next, you need to create that custom template (change_form_help_text.html) and extend the default 'admin/change_form.html'.

# change_form_help_text.html
{% extends 'admin/change_form.html' %}
{% block form_top %} 
    {% if help_text %}<p>{{ help_text }}</p>{% endif %}
{% endblock %}

I've chosen to place this template inside templates/admin/myapp/, but this is also flexible.

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More info available at:

http://davidmburke.com/2010/05/24/django-hack-adding-extra-data-to-admin-interface/

http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/NewformsHOWTO#Q:HowcanIpassextracontextvariablesintomyaddandchangeviews