[Django]-Dynamic fields in Django Admin

The accepted answer above worked in older versions of django, and that’s how I was doing it. This has now broken in later django versions (I am on 1.68 at the moment, but even that is old now).

The reason it is now broken is because any fields within fieldsets you return from ModelAdmin.get_fieldsets() are ultimately passed as the fields=parameter to modelform_factory(), which will give you an error because the fields on your list do not exist (and will not exist until your form is instantiated and its __init__ is called).

In order to fix this, we must override ModelAdmin.get_form() and supply a list of fields that does not include any extra fields that will be added later. The default behavior of get_form is to call get_fieldsets() for this information, and we must prevent that from happening:

# CHOOSE ONE
# newer versions of django use this
from django.contrib.admin.utils import flatten_fieldsets
# if above does not work, use this
from django.contrib.admin.util import flatten_fieldsets

class MyModelForm(ModelForm):
  def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
      super(MyModelForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
      # add your dynamic fields here..
      for fieldname in ('foo', 'bar', 'baz',):
          self.fields[fieldname] = form.CharField()

class MyAdmin(ModelAdmin): 
   form = MyModelForm

    fieldsets = [
       # here you put the list of fieldsets you want displayed.. only
       # including the ones that are not dynamic
    ]

    def get_form(self, request, obj=None, **kwargs):
        # By passing 'fields', we prevent ModelAdmin.get_form from
        # looking up the fields itself by calling self.get_fieldsets()
        # If you do not do this you will get an error from 
        # modelform_factory complaining about non-existent fields.

        # use this line only for django before 1.9 (but after 1.5??)
        kwargs['fields'] =  flatten_fieldsets(self.declared_fieldsets)
        # use this line only for django 1.9 and later 
        kwargs['fields'] =  flatten_fieldsets(self.fieldsets)

        return super(MyAdmin, self).get_form(request, obj, **kwargs)

    def get_fieldsets(self, request, obj=None):
        fieldsets = super(MyAdmin, self).get_fieldsets(request, obj)

        newfieldsets = list(fieldsets)
        fields = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
        newfieldsets.append(['Dynamic Fields', { 'fields': fields }])

        return newfieldsets

Maybe I am a bit late… However, I am using Django 3.0 and also wanted to dynamically ad some custom fields to the form, depending on the request.

I end up with a solution similar to the one described by @tehfink combined with @little_birdie.

However, just updating self.form.declared_fields as suggested didn’t help. The result of this procedure is, that the list of custom fields defined in self.form.declared_fields always grows from request to request.

I solved this by initialising this dictionary first:

class ModelAdminGetCustomFieldsMixin(object):
    def get_fields(self, request, obj=None):
        fields = super().get_fields(request, obj=None)
        self.form.declared_fields = {}
        if obj:
            for custom_attribute in custom_attribute_list:
                self.form.declared_fields.update({custom_attribute.name: custom_attribute.field})
        return fields

where custom_attribute.field is a form field instance.

Additionally, it was required to define a ModelForm, wherein during initialisation the custom fields have been added dynamically as well:

class SomeModelForm(forms.ModelForm):

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        for custom_attribute in custom_attribute_list:
            self.fields[custom_attribute.name] = custom_attribute.field

and use this ModelForm in the ModelAdmin.

Afterwards, the newly defined attributes can be used in, e.g., a fieldset.

This works for adding dynamic fields in Django 1.9.3, using just a ModelAdmin class (no ModelForm) and by overriding get_fields. I don’t know yet how robust it is:

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

    fields = [('title','status', ), 'description', 'contact_person',]
    exclude = ['material']

    def get_fields(self, request, obj=None):
        gf = super(MyModelAdmin, self).get_fields(request, obj)

        new_dynamic_fields = [
            ('test1', forms.CharField()),
            ('test2', forms.ModelMultipleChoiceField(MyModel.objects.all(), widget=forms.CheckboxSelectMultiple)),
        ]

        #without updating get_fields, the admin form will display w/o any new fields
        #without updating base_fields or declared_fields, django will throw an error: django.core.exceptions.FieldError: Unknown field(s) (test) specified for MyModel. Check fields/fieldsets/exclude attributes of class MyModelAdmin.

        for f in new_dynamic_fields:
            #`gf.append(f[0])` results in multiple instances of the new fields
            gf = gf + [f[0]]
            #updating base_fields seems to have the same effect
            self.form.declared_fields.update({f[0]:f[1]})
        return gf

While Jacob’s post might work all right for regular ModelForms (even though it’s more than a year and a half old), the admin is a somewhat different matter.

All the declarative way of defining models, forms ModelAdmins and whatnot makes heavy use of metaclasses and class introspection. Same with the admin – when you tell a ModelAdmin to use a specific form istead of creating a default one, it introspects the class. It gets the list of fields and other stuff from the class itself without instantiating it.

Your custom class, however, does not define the extra form field at class level, instead it dynamically adds one after it has been instantiated – that’s too late for the ModelAdmin to recognize this change.

One way to go about your problem might be to subclass ModelAdmin and override its get_fieldsets method to actually instantiate the ModelForm class and get the list of fields from the instance instead of the class. You’ll have to keep in mind, though, that this might be somewhat slower than the default implementation.

You can create dynamic fields and fieldset using the form meta class. Sample code is given below. Add the loop logic as per you requirements.

class CustomAdminFormMetaClass(ModelFormMetaclass):
    """
    Metaclass for custom admin form with dynamic field
    """
    def __new__(cls, name, bases, attrs):
        for field in get_dynamic_fields: #add logic to get the fields
            attrs[field] = forms.CharField(max_length=30) #add logic to the form field
        return super(CustomAdminFormMetaClass, cls).__new__(cls, name, bases, attrs)


class CustomAdminForm(six.with_metaclass(CustomAdminFormMetaClass, forms.ModelForm)):
    """
    Custom admin form
    """

    class Meta:
        model = ModelName
        fields = "__all__" 


class CustomAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    """
    Custom admin 
    """

    fieldsets = None
    form = CustomAdminForm

    def get_fieldsets(self, request, obj=None):
        """
        Different fieldset for the admin form
        """
        self.fieldsets = self.dynamic_fieldset(). #add logic to add the dynamic fieldset with fields
        return super(CustomAdmin, self).get_fieldsets(request, obj)

    def dynamic_fieldset(self):
        """
        get the dynamic field sets
        """
        fieldsets = []
        for group in get_field_set_groups: #logic to get the field set group
            fields = []
            for field in get_group_fields: #logic to get the group fields
                fields.append(field)

            fieldset_values = {"fields": tuple(fields), "classes": ['collapse']}
            fieldsets.append((group, fieldset_values))

        fieldsets = tuple(fieldsets)

        return fieldsets

Stephan’s answer is elegant, but when I used in in dj1.6 it required the field to be a tuple.
The complete solution looked like this:

class ProductForm(ModelForm):
    foo = CharField(label='foo')


class ProductAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    form = ProductForm
    def get_fieldsets(self, request, obj=None):
        fieldsets = super(ProductAdmin, self).get_fieldsets(request, obj)
        fieldsets[0][1]['fields'] += ('foo', ) 
        return fieldsets

not sure why that’s not working, but could a possible workaround be to define the field statically (on the form) and then override it in the __init__?

I for a long time could not solve a problem with dynamic addition of fields.
The solution “little_birdie” really works. Thank you Birdie))
The only nuance is:
“Self.declared_fieldsets” should be replaced with “self.fieldsets”.

#kwargs['fields'] =  flatten_fieldsets(self.declared_fieldsets)
kwargs['fields'] =  flatten_fieldsets(self.fieldsets)

I used version 1.10. Perhaps something has changed.

If someone finds an even simpler and elegant solution, show here.

Thanks to all )))