Models history doesn't use verbose names

[Antonio Cangiano]

The history for a model object (within the admin section) should show human-readable messages, favoring verbose names over field names. However, this is not currently the case. For example, consider a model with the following class variable:

pub_date = models.DateTimeField("date published")

Changing the publication date for an object of that model, will display "Changed pub_date." in its admin history, rather than "Change date published." as one would expect (as older versions of Django did).

[Alex Gaynor]

Initial patch, probably needs tests.

[Vasil Vangelovski]

Updated patch to apply to current trunk and added a test for the history view.

[Julien Phalip]

Marking as DDN until an answer to ticket:14358#comment:3 is provided.

[Aymeric Augustin]

The objection was "for debug purposes, it would be more useful to have the field names, as they are necessarily unique, untranslated, etc."

In my opinion:

• uniqueness is a weak argument: if you have two fields with the same name, you're just asking for trouble;
• translation isn't an issue at all: in doubt, just switch the website to the default language of your codebase.

[Aymeric Augustin]

#14358 is a duplicate and has patches too.

[Tim Graham]

Patch will need to be updated to apply cleanly.

[Agam Dua]

A Github pull request (​#4496) has been opened for this ticket.

[Tim Graham]

I am thinking it might be best to try to address #21113 first (allow messages to be translated to the current language rather than displaying the language that was active for editing) since this ticket would require a new implementation for that one.

[Tim Graham]

Left comments for improvement on the PR.

[Ramez Issac]

I think it's better to work with the form labels than fields' verbose name,

I think It's actually a more natural flow and more consistent if the label is different then the verbose name. (That's the idea behind the field label option, right?!)

My Approach would be to gather the changed fields' labels, then send it to get_text_list
​https://github.com/django/django/blob/master/django/contrib/admin/options.py#L925-L936

translated_changed_fields = [form.fields[f].label for f in form.changed_data]
change_message.append(_('Changed %s.') % get_text_list(translated_changed_fields, _('and')))

#again for formset
for changed_object, changed_fields in formset.changed_objects:
    translated_changed_fields = [formset.fields[f].label for f in changed_fields]
    change_message.append(_('Changed %(list)s for %(name)s "%(object)s".')
                                          % {'list': get_text_list(translated_changed_fields, _('and')),
#...

Created a duplicate 24990

Regards;

[Tim Graham]

It seems to me that the verbose name is a safer choice to account for the fact that you might have several different editing forms each with a different label.

[Ramez Issac]

IMHO, that depend on the intended audience of the changed message in the history.
If it's the developer then verbose_name are the way to go.
If it's the site 'content' administrator, this is what i think is the case, then labels are more of expected behavior; and in that case the "maybe different" verbose name can be confused as a bug.

"I edited the field "More info", why does it show me that i edited 'description' which is not even present on the form ?"

:)

Kind regards;

[Ramez Issac]

I see that this pull request didn't get merged.

I can go for it with the form label resolution.

[Tim Graham]

After further consideration, I think that approach is okay.

[Ramez Issac]

PR created ​#5169

[Tim Graham]

I left some comments for improvement on the pull request. Don't forget to uncheck "Patch needs improvement" on this ticket after you update it so it appears in the review queue, thanks!

[Tim Graham]

Some ​discussion on the mailing list confirmed my feeling that we should fix #21113 first.

[Sanyam Khurana]

I'm trying to modify the current patch and apply it cleanly to the current master branch.

[Tim Graham]

​PR

[Claude Paroz]

Comments left on the PR.

[Sanyam Khurana]

I've addressed the reviews. Can you please take another pass?

[Carlton Gibson]

Review comments have been addressed. Patch looks good to go. (Will just leave time for Claude to follow up if he wants to.)

[Sanyam Khurana]

Addressed Claude's review on the patch and it is ready for a review again and possibly check-in.

[Carlton Gibson]

There were just a couple more comments on the ticket. Sanyam, please uncheck Patch needs improvement when you've had a look at those. (Thanks for the great effort!)

[Sanyam Khurana]

Hey Carlton, I've addressed the last nit-picks in the patch. Thank you for your patience!

[Sanyam Khurana]

Hello,

Can you please have a look at the recent updates on this patch?

Please let me know if any more changes are needed.

Thanks!

[Tim Graham]

(The patch is in the review queue, no need to add a comment asking for a review. I was on vacation last week and am catching up on things.)

[Carlton Gibson]

PR looks not far off after several reviews. Once comments are addressed it would be good if previous reviewers could give one more look to make sure we don't miss anything.

[Sanyam Khurana]

Hi Carlton,

The PR was approved a long ago.

Can you please take a look and let me know if you think there is anything more to be done here?

Thanks!

[Carlton Gibson <carlton.gibson@…>]

In 87f5d07e:

Fixed #12952 -- Adjusted admin log change messages to use form labels instead of field names.