Configuring django-admin-tools¶

Basic configuration¶

Once installed, you can add django-admin-tools to any Django-based project you’re developing.

django-admin-tools is composed of several modules:

admin_tools.theming: an app that makes it easy to customize the look and feel of the admin interface;
admin_tools.menu: a customizable navigation menu that sits on top of every django administration index page;
admin_tools.dashboard: a customizable dashboard that replaces the django administration index page.

Prerequisite¶

In order to use django-admin-tools you obviously need to have configured your django admin site, if you didn’t, please refer to the relevant django documentation.

Required settings¶

First make sure you have the django.core.context_processors.request template context processor in your TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS.

Then, add the django-admin-tools modules to the INSTALLED_APPS like this:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'admin_tools.theming',
    'admin_tools.menu',
    'admin_tools.dashboard',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django.contrib.admin'
    # ...other installed applications...
)

Note

it is very important that you put the admin_tools modules before the django.contrib.admin module, because django-admin-tools overrides the default django admin templates, and this will not work otherwise.

django-admin-tools is modular, so if you want to disable a particular module, just remove or comment it in your INSTALLED_APPS. For example, if you just want to use the dashboard:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'admin_tools.dashboard',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django.contrib.admin'
    # ...other installed applications...
)

Setting up the database¶

To set up the tables that django-admin-tools uses you’ll need to type:

python manage.py syncdb

django-admin-tools supports South, so if you have South installed, make sure you run the following commands:

python manage.py migrate admin_tools.dashboard
python manage.py migrate admin_tools.menu

Adding django-admin-tools to your urls.py file¶

You’ll need to add django-admin-tools to your urls.py file:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^admin_tools/', include('admin_tools.urls')),
    #...other url patterns...
)

Available settings variables¶

ADMIN_TOOLS_MENU

The path to your custom menu class, for example “yourproject.menu.CustomMenu”.

ADMIN_TOOLS_INDEX_DASHBOARD

The path to your custom index dashboard, for example “yourproject.dashboard.CustomIndexDashboard”.

ADMIN_TOOLS_APP_INDEX_DASHBOARD

The path to your custom app index dashboard, for example “yourproject.dashboard.CustomAppIndexDashboard”.

ADMIN_TOOLS_THEMING_CSS

The path to your theming css stylesheet, relative to your MEDIA_URL, for example:

ADMIN_TOOLS_THEMING_CSS = 'css/theming.css'