Select which fields to export in django-import-export

Question

I'm adding the django-import-export to the admin in my app.

One thing I wanted to do was to offer the possibility of selecting in the admin page of selecting which fields to export.

I searched for this topic but I only came across two questions with no answers.

Is it possible to add the possibility to dynamically choose which fields to export from the admin page?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes this is achievable, but it is a little tricky. Take a look at the example application, and get this working first.

1. Take a look at the BookAdmin implementation.
2. Create a subclass of ExportForm, which implements a form widget which can read the list of fields to export.
3. Add a BookResource constructor which can take a form_fields as a kwarg, and save this as an instance variable.
4. In BookAdmin, Override get_export_resource_kwargs() methods to return the list of fields from the form.
5. Override get_export_fields() of BookResource to return the list of fields extracted from your form.
6. Finally, you'll have to override export_action() so that it creates an instance of your custom form. (You actually only need to override the line which instantiates the form - there should be a get_export_form() method for this, so that the whole method doesn't need to be overridden. Feel free to submit a PR.)

Try this out with the example application before porting to your own app.

Example:

(based on admin.py)

class BookResource(ModelResource):

    class Meta:
        model = Book

    def __init__(self, form_fields=None):
        super().__init__()
        self.form_fields = form_fields

    def get_export_fields(self):
        return [self.fields[f] for f in self.form_fields]


class BookExportForm(ExportForm):
    pass
    # Add your logic to read fields from the form


class BookAdmin(ImportExportMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('name', 'author', 'added')
    list_filter = ['categories', 'author']
    resource_class = BookResource

    def get_export_resource_kwargs(self, request, *args, **kwargs):
        formats = self.get_export_formats()
        form = BookExportForm(formats, request.POST or None)
        # get list of fields from form (hard-coded to 'author' for example purposes)
        form_fields = ("author",)
        return {"form_fields": form_fields}