When working on a content-heavy Django project, I found myself constantly repeating the same code in admin.py — list_display, search_fields, and more.
I thought: what if Django could figure this out on its own?
So I built a reusable utility that does exactly that.
Let me walk you through it — and give you the full code so you can plug it into your own project.
The Utility: auto_admin.py
Save this file as auto_admin.py in your project (e.g., inside a utils/ or core/ folder).
from django.contrib import admin
from django.db import models
def generate_auto_admin(model):
meta = model._meta
fields = [f for f in meta.fields]
list_display = [f.name for f in fields if not isinstance(f, models.TextField)]
search_fields = [f.name for f in fields if isinstance(f, (models.CharField, models.TextField))]
list_filter = [f.name for f in fields if isinstance(f, (models.BooleanField, models.DateField, models.ForeignKey))]
ordering = ['-id'] if any(f.name == 'id' for f in fields) else None
readonly_fields = [f.name for f in fields if not f.editable]
prepopulated_fields = {}
for f in fields:
if isinstance(f, models.SlugField):
for src in fields:
if isinstance(src, models.CharField) and src.name != f.name:
prepopulated_fields[f.name] = (src.name,)
break
date_hierarchy = next((name for name in ['created_at', 'published_at', 'date'] if name in [f.name for f in fields]), None)
admin_attrs = {
"list_display": list_display,
"search_fields": search_fields,
"list_filter": list_filter,
"ordering": ordering,
"readonly_fields": readonly_fields,
"date_hierarchy": date_hierarchy,
}
if prepopulated_fields:
admin_attrs["prepopulated_fields"] = prepopulated_fields
return type(f"{model.__name__}AutoAdmin", (admin.ModelAdmin,), admin_attrs)How to Use It in admin.py
Now in your admin.py, import the generator and register your models like this:
from django.contrib import admin
from django.apps import apps
from .utils.auto_admin import generate_auto_admin # adjust path accordingly
app_models = apps.get_app_config('your_app_name').get_models()
for model in app_models:
try:
admin.site.register(model, generate_auto_admin(model))
except admin.sites.AlreadyRegistered:
passJust replace 'your_app_name' with the name of your app. This loop will automatically register all models using their dynamic ModelAdmin classes.
Why This Works
In regular Python, class variables like list_display = list_display won’t work if list_display is defined outside the class. But using type() like this:
type("MyAdmin", (admin.ModelAdmin,), {"list_display": [...], ...})We bypass that issue by dynamically injecting attributes directly into the class definition at runtime.
This small utility has saved me hours of repetitive admin setup. And because it’s introspection-based, it scales beautifully across apps and teams — without sacrificing readability or maintainability.
Try it in your own project, and let me know how it goes.
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