Django Topic dropdown displays Topic object(1) but not the name of the object

class Topic(models.Model):
    """A topic the user is learning about."""
    text = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    date_added = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

    
class Entry(models.Model):
    """Something specific learned about a topic"""
    topic = models.ForeignKey(Topic, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    text = models.TextField()
    date_added = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

    class Meta:
        verbose_name_plural = 'entries'

    def __str__(self):
        """Return a simple string representation of the entry."""
        return f"{self.text[:50]}..."

Above is the code in the models.py, I'm very knew to django but I an alright understanding of python. Cant really seem to figure out why when I navigate to the website the topics name doesnt appear but instead it says topic object(1) --> topic object(2)

Solution

You need to return a string representation of your Topic model. You should always return a nice, human-readable representation of the model from the __str__() method.

Add this to your Topic model just as you did to Entry:

def __str__(self):
  """Return a string representation of the topic."""
  return self.text

See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/5.0/ref/models/instances/#str