Default filter in Django admin

Question

How can I change the default filter choice from 'ALL'? I have a field named as status which has three values: activate, pending and rejected. When I use list_filter in Django admin, the filter is by default set to 'All' but I want to set it to pending by default.

Answer 1

In order to achieve this and have a usable 'All' link in your sidebar (ie one that shows all rather than showing pending), you'd need to create a custom list filter, inheriting from django.contrib.admin.filters.SimpleListFilter and filtering on 'pending' by default. Something along these lines should work:

from datetime import date  from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _ from django.contrib.admin import SimpleListFilter  class StatusFilter(SimpleListFilter):     title = _('Status')      parameter_name = 'status'      def lookups(self, request, model_admin):         return (             (None, _('Pending')),             ('activate', _('Activate')),             ('rejected', _('Rejected')),             ('all', _('All')),         )      def choices(self, cl):         for lookup, title in self.lookup_choices:             yield {                 'selected': self.value() == lookup,                 'query_string': cl.get_query_string({                     self.parameter_name: lookup,                 }, []),                 'display': title,             }      def queryset(self, request, queryset):         if self.value() in ('activate', 'rejected'):             return queryset.filter(status=self.value())             elif self.value() == None:             return queryset.filter(status='pending')   class Admin(admin.ModelAdmin):      list_filter = [StatusFilter]  

EDIT: Requires Django 1.4 (thanks Simon)