Django-auditlog Change List Customization in Django Admin: A Step-by-Step Guide

As a Django developer, you know how crucial it is to keep track of changes made to your models. Django-auditlog is an excellent tool for logging changes, but what if you want to customize the change list view in Django admin? In this article, we’ll take you through a step-by-step guide on how to do just that.

What is Django-auditlog?

Django-auditlog is a third-party package that allows you to log changes made to your models. It provides a simple way to keep track of who changed what, when, and why. With django-auditlog, you can easily audit changes to your models, including creating, updating, and deleting instances.

Why Customize the Change List View?

The default change list view in Django admin is functional, but it can be overwhelming, especially when dealing with complex models. By customizing the change list view, you can:

• Hide or show specific fields
• Reorder fields to prioritize important information
• Apply custom filtering and sorting
• Enhance the overall user experience

Step 1: Install Django-auditlog

(Assuming you have Django installed.) If you haven’t already, install django-auditlog using pip:

pip install django-auditlog

Add ‘auditlog’ to your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    'auditlog',
    # ...
]

Run the following command to create the necessary tables:

python manage.py migrate

Step 2: Configure Django-auditlog

In settings.py, add the following configuration:

AUDITLOG_INCLUDE_EXCLUDE = ['tests']  # Exclude logging for test cases
AUDITLOG_ADMIN = True  # Enable auditlog in Django admin

This configuration tells django-auditlog to log changes for all models, excluding test cases, and enables auditlog in Django admin.

Step 3: Create a Custom Change List View

In your app’s admin.py, create a custom change list view:

from django.contrib import admin
from auditlog.admin import AuditlogInline
from .models import MyModel

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('id', 'name', 'created_at', 'modified_at')
    inlines = [AuditlogInline]

admin.site.register(MyModel, MyModelAdmin)

In this example, we’re defining a custom change list view for the MyModel model. We’re specifying the fields to display in the list view and including the AuditlogInline.

Step 4: Customize the Change List View

Now, let’s customize the change list view. We’ll add a custom column to display the username of the user who made the change:

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('id', 'name', 'created_at', 'modified_at', 'changed_by')
    inlines = [AuditlogInline]

    def changed_by(self, obj):
        latest_log = obj.auditlog_entries.latest('stamp')
        return latest_log.user.username if latest_log else None

In this example, we’re adding a custom column called ‘changed_by’. We’re using the auditlog_entries attribute to get the latest log entry for the object and returning the username of the user who made the change.

Step 5: Apply Custom Filtering and Sorting

Let’s apply custom filtering and sorting to the change list view. We’ll add a filter to show only changes made by a specific user:

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('id', 'name', 'created_at', 'modified_at', 'changed_by')
    list_filter = ['changed_by']
    inlines = [AuditlogInline]

    def changed_by(self, obj):
        latest_log = obj.auditlog_entries.latest('stamp')
        return latest_log.user.username if latest_log else None

We’re adding a list_filter to the change list view, which allows us to filter by the ‘changed_by’ column.

Step 6: Enhance the User Experience

Finally, let’s enhance the user experience by adding some CSS to make the change list view more readable:

<style>
  .auditlog-inline {
    padding: 10px;
  }
</style>

Add this CSS to your admin template to add some padding to the auditlog inline.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve shown you how to customize the change list view in Django admin using django-auditlog. By following these steps, you can create a more intuitive and user-friendly change list view that meets your specific needs. Remember to experiment and adapt these examples to fit your project’s requirements.

Keyword	Description
Django-auditlog	Django package for logging changes to models
Change List View	View in Django admin that displays a list of changes made to models
AuditlogInline	Inline class in django-auditlog that displays log entries for an object

By following this guide, you’ll be able to create a customized change list view that meets your project’s requirements, making it easier to track changes and maintain data integrity.

We hope you found this article informative and helpful. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to ask.

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