django admin sort foreign key field list

Question

Is there an option in the django admin view for ordering of foreign key fields? ie I have a foreign key to a "School" model, which shows as a dropdown, sorted on pk-- I would like it to be sorted alphabetically.

Answer 1

Sure - you can...

• ModelAdmin specific ordering via formfield_for_foreignkey
• Set default global ordering via a Manager
• Set default ordering via model meta class
• Form specific ordering then passed to your ModelAdmin

ModelAdmin specific method: (the other methods are in my answer in the post linked to above)

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def formfield_for_foreignkey(self, db_field, request, **kwargs):
        if db_field.name == "school":
            kwargs["queryset"] = School.objects.order_by('name')
        return super(MyModelAdmin, self).formfield_for_foreignkey(db_field, request, **kwargs)

Examples for the other 3 non admin specific methods in my post linked above.

Answer 2

It seems to work to add an admin class to the model admin, with the ordering equal to the field you want the drop down list sorted by.

# in the admin.py file

class SchoolAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    ordering = ['school_name']

admin.site.register(SchoolModel, SchoolAdmin)

This works if you are willing to have an edit/add option next to drop down list.

Answer 3

The approved answer might override other changes on the queryset, so I prefer to use this because it's safer:

class StudentAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def get_field_queryset(self, db, db_field, request):
        queryset = super().get_field_queryset(db, db_field, request)
        if db_field.name == 'school':
            queryset = queryset.order_by('name')
        return queryset

Answer 4

You can override formfield_for_foreignkey() to change order as shown below:

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def formfield_for_foreignkey(self, db_field, request, **kwargs):
        formfield = super().formfield_for_foreignkey(db_field, request, **kwargs)
        if db_field.name == "school":            
            formfield.queryset = School.objects.order_by('name')
        return formfield