Replace foreign key dropdown with textbox with add/edit icon - Django

Question

Related to foreign key fields in the Django Admin, the default display element is a drop down list box containing all of the foreign key items from the related model. I my app it will contain thousands of items and I am looking to change the admin interface and have it use a text box instead of the populated drop down.

Looking for textbox with add/edit icon next to it, so that we dont get populated values, we just directly add or edit.

Is there any way around to achieve it.

Answer 1

You can try use custom Form and realize custom Widget on this form field. (I use for this desicion 3rd party library django_select2)

from django import forms
from django_select2.forms import ModelSelect2Widget


class KeyWidget(ModelSelect2Widget):
    model = ModelToKey
    search_fields = ['field__icontains']

    def label_from_instance(self, obj):
        return u'{}'.format(obj.field)


class CustomForm(forms.ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        model = ModelWithKey
        fields = ('foreign_key_field')
        widgets = {
            'foreign_key_field': KeyWidget(attrs={'style': 'width:550px'}),
            }

In also you can overload Form __init__ for customize queryset of objects for choosing in this field.