= Extending the Admin Templates =

=== Intro ===
Django's admin stuff is great.  Often, you would like to just add just a little and you would be all set.  For example it would be nice to be able to add links to related data on a change form (detail).  With 1 little hack, this is easy.  The hack is that you need to copy (if you are on Windows, `link` on Nixes) the admin template that you want to extend so that the template loader does not get confused.  

(Of course, there is probably some simpler mechanism I have not come across or recognized yet, but... live and learn.)


=== Steps ===
 1. make a directory in your template path named ``admin_copies``
 2. copy change_form.html from your Django install's contrib/admin/templates/admin
 3. create the template to override admin, in this case admin/auction/participant/change_form.html (the template loader find it because it looks first in your template_dirs before looking in the app directories, i.e. django.contrib.admin.)
 4. your change_form.html will look something like:
   {{{
{% extends "admin_copies/change_form.html" %}
{% block coltype %}colMS{% endblock %}
{% block sidebar %}
<div id="content-related">
    <div id="navcontainer">
        <ul id="navlist">
            <li><a href="../merge/">Merge {{ form.data.id }} to another</a></li>
            {% ifequal form.data.is_shareholder 1 %}
            <li><a href="/admin/manager/shareholders/{{ form.data.id }}/">Show shareholder data for {{ form.data.id }}</a></li>
            {% endifequal %}
        </ul>
    </div>
</div>
{% endblock %}
   }}}
   This makes the layout use a sidebar and populates it with some links for related functions or data.

=== Conclusion ===
You need the admin_copies directory because you can not extend admin/change_form since it will never be found--you are editing the very file that overrides it. So you give the template loader another place to look.  Hence, the copy.

The above template--with some CSS--produces: [[Image(change_form.PNG, top)]]

All very neat and clean.