Django admin: How to display a field that is marked as editable=False' in the model?

Update

This solution is useful if you want to keep the field editable in Admin but non-editable everywhere else. If you want to keep the field non-editable throughout then @Till Backhaus' answer is the better option.

Original Answer

One way to do this would be to use a custom ModelForm in admin. This form can override the required field to make it editable. Thereby you retain editable=False everywhere else but Admin. For e.g. (tested with Django 1.2.3)

# models.py
class FooModel(models.Model):
first = models.CharField(max_length = 255, editable = False)
second  = models.CharField(max_length = 255)


def __unicode__(self):
return "{0} {1}".format(self.first, self.second)


# admin.py
class CustomFooForm(forms.ModelForm):
first = forms.CharField()


class Meta:
model = FooModel
fields = ('second',)


class FooAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
form = CustomFooForm


admin.site.register(FooModel, FooAdmin)

Use Readonly Fields. Like so (for django >= 1.2):

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
readonly_fields=('first',)

Your read-only fields must be in fields also:

fields = ['title', 'author', 'content', 'published_date', 'updated_date', 'created_date']
readonly_fields = ('published_date', 'updated_date', 'created_date')

You could also set the readonly fields as editable=False in the model (django doc reference for editable here). And then in the Admin overriding the get_readonly_fields method.

# models.py
class MyModel(models.Model):
first = models.CharField(max_length=255, editable=False)


# admin.py
class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
def get_readonly_fields(self, request, obj=None):
return [f.name for f in obj._meta.fields if not f.editable]

With the above solution I was able to display hidden fields for several objects but got an exception when trying to add a new object.

So I enhanced it like follows:

class HiddenFieldsAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
def get_readonly_fields(self, request, obj=None):
try:
return [f.name for f in obj._meta.fields if not f.editable]
except:
# if a new object is to be created the try clause will fail due to missing _meta.fields
return ""

And in the corresponding admin.py file I just had to import the new class and add it whenever registering a new model class

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Example, HiddenFieldsAdmin


admin.site.register(Example, HiddenFieldsAdmin)

Now I can use it on every class with non-editable fields and so far I saw no unwanted side effects.

You can try this

@admin.register(AgentLinks)
class AgentLinksAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
readonly_fields = ('link', )