Django Admin Generator

Scaffold a complete, sensible Django admin for your models in one command.

django-admin-generator is a management command that introspects your models and writes a ready-to-use admin.py: list_display, list_filter, search_fields, raw_id_fields, date_hierarchy, prepopulated_fields and autocomplete, so you don't have to hand-write any of it.

The list view above, filter sidebar and date drill-down included, came straight from the models with no hand-written admin code.

Quick start

pip install django-admin-generator

Add django_admin_generator to your INSTALLED_APPS, then generate an admin and write it to the app's admin.py:

./manage.py admin_generator <app> --write

Reload the Django admin. Your models are fully wired up.

What gets generated

For every model, the generator inspects the fields and picks sensible options:

The result is plain, readable code you can keep or tweak:

class PostAdmin(ModelAdminBase):
    list_display = (
        'id', 'title', 'slug', 'body', 'created_at',
        'published_at', 'is_published', 'author', 'category',
    )
    list_filter = ('created_at', 'published_at', 'is_published', 'author', 'category')
    autocomplete_fields = ('tags',)
    search_fields = ('slug',)
    prepopulated_fields = {'slug': ['title']}
    date_hierarchy = 'created_at'

That produces a fully wired add/change form: prepopulated slugs, autocomplete for relations, and the right widgets everywhere:

Usage

By default the output is printed to stdout so you can review it before writing:

./manage.py admin_generator <app>                 # print to stdout
./manage.py admin_generator <app> '^user'         # only models matching a regex
./manage.py admin_generator <app> --write         # write <app>/admin.py
./manage.py admin_generator <app> -o admin.py -f  # custom output file, overwrite
./manage.py admin_generator all                   # every local (non site-packages) app

Handy options:

Run ./manage.py admin_generator --help for the full list.

Tip: pairs perfectly with Django's inspectdb for legacy databases: generate the models, then generate the admin.

Live demo

Spin up a self-documenting blog demo whose admin.py is fully auto-generated:

tox -e demo        # or: uv run --extra demo python test_project/manage.py demo

It migrates, seeds realistic data, and opens the admin (login admin / admin). The index page explains exactly what was generated and why:

See test_project/README.md for a guided tour.

Compatibility

• Python 3.10 to 3.14
• Django 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1

Development

This project uses uv and tox:

uv sync --extra dev      # create the environment
uv run pytest            # run the tests (100% coverage)
uv run ruff check .      # lint
uv run tox               # full matrix: tests, lint, types, docs

Links

• Documentation: https://django-admin-generator.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
• Source: https://github.com/WoLpH/django-admin-generator
• Bug reports: https://github.com/WoLpH/django-admin-generator/issues
• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/django-admin-generator/
• Blog: https://w.wol.ph/

Support

django-admin-generator is maintained by Rick van Hattem in his own time.

If it saved you an afternoon, a tip covers an hour of issue triage: Ko-fi or GitHub Sponsors.

If your company funds its dependencies, this package is on thanks.dev.

License

BSD-3-Clause, see LICENSE.