Django admin add custom filter

Question

i'm using django 1.10 and I need to display data and create a filter based on a value from a different model(which has a foreign key referencing my model that is used on the admin template) These are my 2 models: This one is used to generate the template:

class Job(models.Model):
    company = models.ForeignKey(Company)
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=False)
    description = models.TextField(blank=False, default='')
    store = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, default='')
    phone_number = models.CharField(max_length=60, null=True, blank=True)

This is the other one that holds a foreign key reference to my first one:

class JobAdDuration(models.Model):
    job = models.ForeignKey(Job)
    ad_activated = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    ad_finished = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True)

Inside my template, I have been able to display the(latest)start and end times

def start_date(self,obj):
    if JobAdDuration.objects.filter(job=obj.id).exists():
        tempad = JobAdDuration.objects.filter(job=obj).order_by("-id")[0]
        return tempad.ad_activated

And then I just call this inside the list_display and that is working fine. However, i have trouble setting a filter field using these criteria.

If I just add it to my list_filter then I get an error that there is no such field inside my model which is true (since that one is in another table that has reference to my job table). So I was wondering what is the right approach to solve this? Do I need to create another function for the filter itself but even then I'm not sure how should I call it inside the list_filter.

Here is a snippet of my Django admin page.

class JobAdmin(admin.OSMGeoAdmin, ImportExportModelAdmin):
    inlines = [
    ]

    readonly_fields = ( 'id', "start_date", )

    raw_id_fields = ("company",)

    list_filter = (('JobAdDuration__ad_activated', DateRangeFilter), 'recruitment', 'active', 'deleted', 'position', ('created', DateRangeFilter), 'town')
    search_fields = ('title', 'description', 'company__name', 'id', 'phone_number', 'town')
    list_display = ('title', 'id', 'description', 'active', 'transaction_number', 'company', 'get_position', 'town','created', 'expires', 'views', 'recruitment', 'recruits', 'paid', 'deleted', "start_date", "end_Date", "ad_consultant")


    def start_date(self,obj):
        if JobAdDuration.objects.filter(job=obj.id).exists():
            tempad = JobAdDuration.objects.filter(job=obj).order_by("-id")[0]
            return tempad.ad_activated

EDIT: In the meantime, I tried to solve it with a simple list filter, but I am unable to get it to work. I would like to place 2 input fields with a calendar(like the default DateRangeFilter) that would represent the start and end time, and then return data based on those values. This is my "prototype" functionality for the simple filter, it works but it returns hard-coded data.

class StartTimeFilter(SimpleListFilter):
    title = ('Start date')
    parameter_name = 'ad_finished'

    def lookups(self, request, model_admin):
       #return JobAdDuration.objects.values_list("ad_finished")
       return (
       ('startDate', 'stest1'),
       ('startDate1', 'test2')
       )

    def queryset(self, request, queryset):
        if not self.value():
            return queryset

 
        assigned = JobAdDuration.objects.filter(ad_finished__range=(datetime.now() - timedelta(minutes=45000), datetime.now()))
        allJobs = Job.objects.filter(pk__in=[current.job.id for current in assigned])
        return allJobs

 

Answer 1

I would go with customized FieldListFilter as it allows to bind filter to different model fields based on your requirements.

What is we actually do to implement such filter is next:

• build lookup_kwargs gte and lte and specify them as expected_parameters
• define choices to return empty list otherwise NotImplementedError
• create form to care fields validation
• create custom template which just outputs form, e.g. {{spec.form}}
• if form is valid take it's cleaned data, filter out Nones and filter queryset otherwise do something with errors (in code below errors are silenced)

Filter code:

class StartTimeFilter(admin.filters.FieldListFilter):
    # custom template which just outputs form, e.g. {{spec.form}}
    template = 'start_time_filter.html'

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        field_path = kwargs['field_path']
        self.lookup_kwarg_since = '%s__gte' % field_path
        self.lookup_kwarg_upto = '%s__lte' % field_path
        super(StartTimeFilter, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.form = StartTimeForm(data=self.used_parameters, field_name=field_path)

    def expected_parameters(self):
        return [self.lookup_kwarg_since, self.lookup_kwarg_upto]

    # no predefined choices
    def choices(self, cl):
        return []

    def queryset(self, request, queryset):
        if self.form.is_valid():
            filter_params = {
                p: self.form.cleaned_data.get(p) for p in self.expected_parameters()
                if self.form.cleaned_data.get(p) is not None
            }
            return queryset.filter(**filter_params)
        else:
            return queryset

Form can be as simple as follows:

class StartTimeForm(forms.Form):

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.field_name = kwargs.pop('field_name')
        super(StartTimeForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['%s__gte' % self.field_name] = forms.DateField()
        self.fields['%s__lte' % self.field_name] = forms.DateField()

Answer 2

This isn't exactly what you've asked for, but you could instead have the filter on the JobAdDuration modelAdmin. This way, you can get the corresponding jobs filtered according to the ad_activated and ad_finished fields. And I've added a link to the job field, so you can directly click it for easier navigation.

To make it a date html5 filter, I've used django-admin-rangefilter library.

from django.urls import reverse
from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Job, JobAdDuration
from django.utils.html import format_html
from rangefilter.filter import DateRangeFilter


@admin.register(JobAdDuration)
class JobAdDurationAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

    list_filter = (('ad_activated', DateRangeFilter), ('ad_finished', DateRangeFilter))
    list_display = ('id', 'job_link', 'ad_activated', 'ad_finished')

    def job_link(self, obj):
        return format_html('<a href="{}">{}</a>', reverse('admin:job_job_change', args=[obj.job.id]), obj.job.title)
    job_link.short_description = 'Job'

If you indeed want to go the existing route (filter inside JobAdmin), then things will get quite complicated.