[Solved]-Re-ordering entries in a model using drag-and-drop

Note on the “It would be best if i didn’t have to add any extra fields to the model, but if i really have to i can.”

Sorry, but order of information in a database is determined by the information itself: you always have to add a column for ordering. There’s really no choice about that.

Further, to retrieve things in this order, you’ll need to specifically add .order_by(x) to your queries or add ordering to your model.

class InOrder( models.Model ):
    position = models.IntegerField()
    data = models.TextField()
    class Meta:
        ordering = [ 'position' ]

Without the additional field ordering cannot happen. It’s one of the rules of relational databases.

There’s a nice package for ordering admin objects these days

https://github.com/iambrandontaylor/django-admin-sortable

Also, django-suit has builtin support for this

You may try this snippet https://gist.github.com/barseghyanartur/1ebf927512b18dc2e5be (originally based on this snippet http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/2160/).

Integration is very simple.

Your model (in models.py):

class MyModel(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    order = models.IntegerField()
    # Other fields...

    class Meta:
        ordering = ('order',)

You admin (admin.py):

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    fields = ('name', 'order',) # Add other fields here
    list_display = ('name', 'order',)
    list_editable = ('order',)

    class Media:
        js = (
            '//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.2.js',
            '//code.jquery.com/ui/1.8.6/jquery-ui.js',
            'path/to/sortable_list.js',
        )

Change the JS (of the snippet) accordingly if your attributes responsible for holding the name and ordering are named differently in your model.

In model class you would probably have to add “order” field, to maintain specific order (eg. item with order = 10 is the last one and order = 1 is the first one). Then you can add a JS code in admin change_list template (see this) to maintain drag&drop feature. Finally change ordering in Meta of model to something like [‘order’].

The order can only be determined if you add a field in your model.Let’s add a position field in your model.

In your models.py 

class MainModel(models.Model):

    name = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    position = models.PositiveSmallIntegerField(null=True)

    class Meta:
        ordering = ('position',)

In your apps admin.py

class IdeaCardTagInline(nested_admin.NestedStackedInline):
    model = MainModel
    extra = 0
    min_num = 1
    sortable_field_name = "position"

ordering = ('position',) in Meta will order the MainModel according to the value in the position field.
sortable_field_name = "position" will help in autofill of the value in position when an user drag and drop the multiple models.

To see the same order in your api, use order_by(x) in views_model.py.
Just a model example:

Model.objects.filter().order_by('position').