The newforms-admin branch

This branch aims to integrate Django's admin site with the ​newforms library. Along the way, we'll take the opportunity to add extra customization hooks to the admin site, in preparation for a complete admin-site refactoring in the future.

We're aiming to get it merged into trunk by Jan. 31, 2007.

How to get the branch

svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/branches/newforms-admin/

See our ​branch policy for full information on how to use a branch.

Goals

In no particular order, here are the goals of this branch. This list may expand as we get more ideas.

• Core goals
  • Change the admin site to use newforms instead of automatic manipulators.
  • Enable developers to declare custom widgets for particular fields in a model.
  • Enable developers to declare custom admin-only validation for a model (i.e., validation logic that is applied only in the admin site, nowhere else).
• "Would be nice, and we're going to try our hardest to get this in" goals
  • Give developers extra hooks into the admin-site functionality. (Yes, this is a broad goal. More examples are forthcoming.)
  • Integrate some ideas from #2248: Remove core=True, specify inline models in the model itself rather than in the related model, specify which fields should be displayed inline.

The ​django.contrib.formtools.preview.FormPreview application (not yet documented, but fully implemented) elegantly allows for fine-grained customization of the application by subclassing. A similar approach would be a great fit for the Django admin site: Write a class that subclasses a base class called ModelAdmin and specify whichever customizations you need to make -- from the current basic admin options such as list_display and search_fields to full-on Python hooks, such as defining arbitrary Python code to run before or after a model object is saved via the admin.

We should keep in mind this future goal as we implement the newforms-admin branch. Although we don't have to implement all of this hooks for the time being, we should ensure this branch's changes are future-compatible with these plans.

Roadmap

Change admin URLconf so that the five model-specific views (change_list, add_stage, history, delete_stage, change_stage) point to the class Admin in the appropriate model, rather than pointing at the django.contrib.admin view functions.	Done in [4315]
Create a class django.contrib.admin.options.ModelAdmin, which implements the admin hooks for a particular model.	Done in [4315]
Implement has_add_permission(), has_change_permission() and has_delete_permission() hooks on ModelAdmin, so people can implement specific permission logic (such as per-object permissions).	Done in [4324]
Change model infastructure/metaclass so that the inner class Admin automatically subclasses ModelAdmin. (This is a bit of black magic, but it's necessary for backwards compatibility. We may require an explicit subclass declaration in the future.)	Done in [4328]
Implement ModelAdmin.add_view as a method rather than the add_stage view function.	Done in [4323].
Implement ModelAdmin.change_view as a method rather than the change_stage view function.	Done in [4322].
Implement ModelAdmin.change_list_view.	Done in [4320]
Implement ModelAdmin.history_view.	Done in [4319]
Implement ModelAdmin.delete_view.	Done in [4321]
Change _meta.admin on a model to be a ModelAdmin class instead of a AdminOptions instance, and remove the AdminOptions class.	Done in [4343]
Clean up some of the admin: fold ChangeList methods/functionality into ModelAdmin.	Not done yet
Change ModelAdmin.add_view to use newforms.	Not done yet
Change ModelAdmin.change_view to use newforms.	Not done yet
Figure out a cleaner way of specifying admin options, now that class Admin is much more powerful. It doesn't feel like it should live in the model anymore.	Not done yet; requires django-developers discussion