Django Admin "Edit Selection" Action?

Question

I'd like to write a django-admin action (for use when the user selects zero or more rows) that will allow them to edit the selected items as a group. I only need to edit one of the items in the model (the "room") at a time, but I don't want to have to go through all 480 of my objects and manually edit them one-by-one.

Is there a way to throw up an interstitial page that allows the user to edit the items as a group?

Answer 1

You are able to create custom admin actions, and using JavaScript or custom ModleForms you could easily create popup windows or alerts, or whatever you want to do. For example I have this in the admin for one of my apps:

admin.py:

def deactivate_selected(modeladmin, request, queryset):
    rows_updated = queryset.update(active=0)
    for obj in queryset: obj.save()
    if rows_updated == 1:
        message_bit = '1 item was'
    else:
        message_bit = '%s items were' % rows_updated
    modeladmin.message_user(request, '%s successfully deactivated.' % message_bit)
deactivate_selected.short_description = "Deactivate selected items"

## add deactivates 
admin.site.add_action(deactivate_selected)

This adds the option to "Deactive selected items" in the admin page.

It seems to me that it would be easy to make a custom action to "Update room for selected items" that would present a JavaScript prompt, take that input, and provide it to the custom action function to perform what you need to do.

More reading can be found on this here: Writing Django Admin Actions.