How to override and extend basic Django admin templates

Question

How do I override an admin template  e g  admin index html  while at the same time extending it  see https   docs djangoproject com en dev ref contrib admin  overriding-vs-replacing-an-admin-template    First - I know that this question has been asked and answered before  see Django  Overriding AND extending an app template  but as the answer says it isn t directly applicable if you re using the app directories template loader  which is most of the time    My current workaround is to make copies and extend from them instead of extending directly from the admin templates  This works great but it s really confusing and adds extra work when the admin templates change   It could think of some custom extend-tag for the templates but I don t want to reinvent the wheel if there already exists a solution   On a side note  Does anybody know if this problem will be addressed by Django itself

User · Answer

You can use django-overextends  which provides circular template inheritance for Django   It comes from the Mezzanine CMS  from where Stephen extracted it into a standalone Django extension   More infos you find in  Overriding vs Extending Templates   http  mezzanine jupo org docs content-architecture html overriding-vs-extending-templates  inside the Mezzanine docs   For deeper insides look at Stephens Blog  Circular Template Inheritance for Django   http  blog jupo org 2012 05 17 circular-template-inheritance-for-django    And in Google Groups the discussion  https  groups google com forum   topic mezzanine-users sUydcf IZkQ  which started the development of this feature   Note   I don t have the reputation to add more than 2 links  But I think the links provide interesting background information  So I just left out a slash after  http s     Maybe someone with better reputation can repair the links and remove this note

User · Answer

Chengs s answer is correct  howewer according to the admin docs not every admin template can be overwritten this way   https   docs djangoproject com en 1 9 ref contrib admin  overriding-admin-templates     Templates which may be overridden per app or model      Not every template in contrib admin templates admin may be overridden   per app or per model  The following can   app index html change form html change list html delete confirmation html object history html       For those templates that cannot be overridden in this way  you may   still override them for your entire project  Just place the new   version in your templates admin directory  This is particularly useful   to create custom 404 and 500 pages   I had to overwrite the login html of the admin and therefore had to put the overwritten template in this folder structure    your project   -- your project    -- myapp    -- templates         -- admin             -- login html   lt - do not misspell this    without the myapp subfolder in the admin   I do not have enough repution for commenting on Cheng s post this is why I had to write this as new answer

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I couldn t find a single answer or a section in the official Django docs that had all the information I needed to override extend the default admin templates  so I m writing this answer as a complete guide  hoping that it would be helpful for others in the future   Assuming the standard Django project structure   mysite-container            project container directory     manage py     mysite                  project package           init   py         admin py         apps py         settings py         urls py         wsgi py     app1      app2              static      templates    Here s what you need to do    In mysite admin py  create a sub-class of AdminSite   from django contrib admin import AdminSite   class CustomAdminSite AdminSite         set values for  site header    site title    index title  etc      site header    Custom Admin Site                 extend   override admin views  such as  index        def index self  request  extra context None           extra context   extra context or               do whatever you want to do and save the values in  extra context          extra context  world      Earth           return super CustomAdminSite  self  index request  extra context    custom admin site   CustomAdminSite     Make sure to import custom admin site in the admin py of your apps and register your models on it to display them on your customized admin site  if you want to   In mysite apps py  create a sub-class of AdminConfig and set default site to admin CustomAdminSite from the previous step   from django contrib admin apps import AdminConfig   class CustomAdminConfig AdminConfig       default site    admin CustomAdminSite   In mysite settings py  replace django admin site in INSTALLED APPS with apps CustomAdminConfig  your custom admin app config from the previous step   In mysite urls py  replace admin site urls from the admin URL to custom admin site urls  from  admin import custom admin site   urlpatterns                 path  admin    custom admin site urls         for Django 1 x versions  url r  admin    include custom admin site urls               Create the template you want to modify in your templates directory  maintaining the default Django admin templates directory structure as specified in the docs  For example  if you were modifying admin index html  create the file templates admin index html   All of the existing templates can be modified this way  and their names and structures can be found in Django s source code  Now you can either override the template by writing it from scratch or extend it and then override extend specific blocks   For example  if you wanted to keep everything as-is but wanted to override the content block  which on the index page lists the apps and their models that you registered   add the following to templates admin index html      extends  admin index html         block content       lt h1 gt      Hello     world        lt  h1 gt     endblock      To preserve the original contents of a block  add    block super    wherever you want the original contents to be displayed      extends  admin index html         block content       lt h1 gt      Hello     world        lt  h1 gt       block super       endblock      You can also add custom styles and scripts by modifying the extrastyle and extrahead blocks

User · Answer

if you need to overwrite the admin index html  you can set the index template parameter of the AdminSite   e g     urls py     from django contrib import admin  admin site index template    admin my custom index html  admin autodiscover     and place your template in  lt appname gt  templates admin my custom index html

User · Answer

The best way to do it is to put the Django admin templates inside your project  So your templates would be in templates admin while the stock Django admin templates would be in say template django admin  Then  you can do something like the following   templates admin change form html     extends  django admin change form html      Your stuff here   If you re worried about keeping the stock templates up to date  you can include them with svn externals or similar

User · Answer

As for Django 1 8 being the current release  there is no need to symlink  copy the admin templates to your project folder  or install middlewares as suggested by the answers above  Here is what to do    create the following tree structure recommended by the official documentation   your project       -- your project        -- myapp        -- templates             -- admin                 -- myapp                     -- change form html   lt - do not misspell this    Note  The location of this file is not important  You can put it inside your app and it will still work  As long as its location can be discovered by django  What s more important is the name of the HTML file has to be the same as the original HTML file name provided by django    Add this template path to your settings py   TEMPLATES                    BACKEND    django template backends django DjangoTemplates            DIRS    os path join BASE DIR   templates        lt - add this line          APP DIRS   True           OPTIONS                  context processors                      django template context processors debug                    django template context processors request                    django contrib auth context processors auth                    django contrib messages context processors messages                                       Identify the name and block you want to override  This is done by looking into django s admin templates directory  I am using virtualenv  so for me  the path is here      virtualenvs edge lib python2 7 site-packages django contrib admin templates admin    In this example  I want to modify the add new user form  The template responsiblve for this view is change form html  Open up the change form html and find the    block    that you want to extend    In your change form html  write somethings like this      extends  admin change form html        block field sets            your modification here       endblock     Load up your page and you should see the changes

User · Answer

Update  Read the Docs for your version of Django  e g  https   docs djangoproject com en 1 11 ref contrib admin  admin-overriding-templates https   docs djangoproject com en 2 0 ref contrib admin  admin-overriding-templates https   docs djangoproject com en 3 0 ref contrib admin  admin-overriding-templates Original answer from 2011  I had the same issue about a year and a half ago and I found a nice template loader on djangosnippets org that makes this easy  It allows you to extend a template in a specific app  giving you the ability to create your own admin index html that extends the admin index html template from the admin app  Like this     extends  quot admin admin index html quot         block sidebar          block super        lt div gt           lt h1 gt Extra links lt  h1 gt           lt a href  quot  admin extra  quot  gt My extra link lt  a gt       lt  div gt     endblock     I ve given a full example on how to use this template loader in a blog post on my website

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With django 1 5  at least  you can define the template you want to use for a particular modeladmin  see https   docs djangoproject com en 1 5 ref contrib admin  custom-template-options  You can do something like  class Myadmin admin ModelAdmin       change form template    change form htm    With change form html being a simple html template extending admin change form html  or not if you want to do it from scratch

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This site had a simple solution that worked with my Django 1 7 configuration   FIRST  Make a symlink named admin src in your project s template  directory to your installed Django templates  For me on Dreamhost using a virtualenv  my  source  Django admin templates were in     virtualenvs mydomain lib python2 7 site-packages django contrib admin templates admin   SECOND  Create an admin directory in templates   So my project s template  directory now looked like this    templates     admin    admin src - gt   to django source     base html    index html    sitemap xml    etc      THIRD  In your new template admin  directory create a base html file with this content      extends  admin src base html         block extrahead     lt link rel  shortcut icon  href     STATIC URL   img favicon-admin ico    gt     endblock      FOURTH  Add your admin favicon-admin ico into your static root img folder   Done  Easy

User · Answer

for app index  add this line to somewhere common py file like url py  admin site index template    admin custom index html    for app module index   add this line to admin py  admin AdminSite app index template    servers servers-home html    for change list   add this line to admin class   change list template    servers servers changelist html    for app module form template   add this line to your admin class  change form template    servers server changeform html    etc  and find other in same admin s module classes

User · Answer

I agree with Chris Pratt  But I think it s better to create the symlink to original Django folder where the admin templates place in   ln -s  usr local lib python2 7 dist-packages django contrib admin templates admin  templates django admin   and as you can see it depends on python version and the folder where the Django installed  So in future or on a production server you might need to change the path

[python] How to override and extend basic Django admin templates?

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