raw_id_fields: How to show a name instead of id?

Question

Customizing a Django Admin panel, I'm using raw_id_fields to select a ForeignKey from a Model which has thousands of elements, because the default select-box drop-down is inconvenient with so many elements.

It works but it shows the id as can be seen on this image:

Is there any way to show the name or other field instead of the id? Or, is there any better way to accomplish this than using raw_id_fields?

This is my code in models.py:

class Structure(MPTTModel):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200, unique=True, verbose_name = _('name'))
    parent = TreeForeignKey('self', null=True, blank=True, related_name='children', verbose_name = _('parent'))

    def __unicode__(self):
        return u"%s" % (self.name)

In admin.py:

class StructureAdmin(tree_editor.TreeEditor):
    search_fields = ('name',)
    raw_id_fields = ('parent',)

Answer 1

From Django 2.0 you can use autocomplete_fields. It will work just like ajax select2.

In admin.py

class StructureAdmin(tree_editor.TreeEditor):
    search_fields = ('name',)
    autocomplete_fields = ('parent',)

Reference: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.1/ref/contrib/admin/#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.autocomplete_fields

Answer 2

I've also researched this and I don't think it's possible. I think the best you can do is display the unicode of the field next to the raw id field: http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/2108/

Alternatively, you can display the unicode and a link to the value's corresponding admin change page: http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/2217/

Answer 3

It seems this plugin: https://github.com/lincolnloop/django-dynamic-raw-id

does what you want:

(copied from the doc):

Usage

To start using django-dynamic-raw-id in your application all you need to do is implement DynamicRawIDMixin in your ModelAdmin class and add the desired fields to a list of dynamic_raw_id_fields:

from dynamic_raw_id.admin import DynamicRawIDMixin

class UserProfileAdmin(DynamicRawIDMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):
    dynamic_raw_id_fields = ('user',)

You can use dynamic_raw_id widgets in a Admin filter as well:

from dynamic_raw_id.admin import DynamicRawIDMixin
from dynamic_raw_id.filters import DynamicRawIDFilter

class UserProfileAdmin(DynamicRawIDMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = (
        ('dynamic_raw_id_fk', DynamicRawIDFilter),
    )

Answer 4

For the representation of an object use __unicode__

class Person(models.Model):
    first_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
    last_name = models.CharField(max_length=50)

    def __unicode__(self):
        return u'%s %s' % (self.first_name, self.last_name)

In Python 3 use

def __str__(self):