django-admin-radio-select

Synchronize BooleanFields across Django Admin inline rows as mutually exclusive radio button groups.

Problem

An inline BooleanField column renders as independent checkboxes:

Image A    [ ]
Image B    [x]
Image C    [ ]

Nothing stops you from checking more than one — but often only one row should ever be true (the primary image, the default address, the featured item). This package renders that column as radio buttons instead:

Image A    ( )
Image B    (•)
Image C    ( )

Selecting one clears the others, enforced with a small vanilla JS module. Every row still POSTs under its own normal Django-generated field name (e.g. images-0-is_primary, images-1-is_primary) — nothing here relies on giving different forms the same HTML name. A formset-level check on the server also rejects a handcrafted POST that tries to set more than one row true, so the guarantee doesn't depend on JavaScript running at all.

Inline formset, before and after clicking a different row's radio — note is_primary switches from "Snowy Peak" to "Frozen Lake" while the independent is_featured column ("Cabin") is untouched:

Same behavior on a ModelAdmin changelist, via list_editable (see below):

Install

uv add django-admin-radio-select
# or
pip install django-admin-radio-select

Add it to INSTALLED_APPS — it's a real Django app (with its own AppConfig), which is what makes django.contrib.staticfiles pick up its JS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...,
    "django_admin_radio_select",
]

Usage

from django.contrib import admin
from django_admin_radio_select import ExclusiveRadioFieldsMixin

from .models import Album, Image


class ImageInline(ExclusiveRadioFieldsMixin, admin.TabularInline):
    model = Image
    radio_select_exclusive_fields = ("is_primary",)


@admin.register(Album)
class AlbumAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    inlines = [ImageInline]

Works the same way with StackedInline:

class ImageInline(ExclusiveRadioFieldsMixin, admin.StackedInline):
    model = Image
    radio_select_exclusive_fields = ("is_primary",)

Multiple fields are independent groups:

class ImageInline(ExclusiveRadioFieldsMixin, admin.TabularInline):
    model = Image
    radio_select_exclusive_fields = ("is_primary", "is_featured")

Compute the field list per request (and, for an inline or a change form, per object) instead of (or in addition to) the class attribute:

class ImageInline(ExclusiveRadioFieldsMixin, admin.TabularInline):
    model = Image

    def get_radio_select_exclusive_fields(self, request, obj=None):
        return ("is_primary",) if request.user.is_superuser else ()

Whatever get_radio_select_exclusive_fields returns — the default above, or an override like the one above it — always gets filtered against get_readonly_fields(request, obj) before being used: a readonly field isn't rendered as an editable widget at all, so there's nothing to turn into a radio button. This matters for a field that's only conditionally readonly (permissions, object state, ...): without it, a field in radio_select_exclusive_fields that becomes readonly for some request would no longer be on the form at all and raise ImproperlyConfigured, for a state the admin class itself put it in. This filtering happens in a separate _get_effective_radio_select_exclusive_fields(request, obj) method precisely so overriding get_radio_select_exclusive_fields doesn't also have to reimplement it.

Each configured name must be a BooleanField present on the form — anything else raises ImproperlyConfigured when the admin builds the formset (a python manage.py check-time-ish failure, not a silent no-op). "Present on the form" is deliberate: the field only has to exist there, not on the model. A field declared only on a custom ModelForm/InlineModelAdmin.form (not a real model field at all) works exactly the same as any other configured field, and so does a form field that overrides the model's own type for that name (e.g. the model has a CharField but the form redeclares it as a BooleanField) — this package never inspects the model, only form.base_fields.

ModelAdmin changelist (list_editable)

The same mixin also works directly on a ModelAdmin, for a BooleanField column made editable in the changelist via list_editable. The field still has to be in list_display too — that's a normal Django list_editable requirement, unrelated to this package:

@admin.register(Album)
class AlbumAdmin(ExclusiveRadioFieldsMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ("title", "is_featured")
    list_editable = ("is_featured",)
    radio_select_exclusive_fields = ("is_featured",)

Now only one Album row in the whole changelist can have is_featured checked at a time — same client-side sync, same per-row Django field names (form-0-is_featured, form-1-is_featured, ...), same server-side exclusivity check on save.

Supported versions

Python 3.10–3.13, Django 4.2–5.2. Works on TabularInline, StackedInline, and ModelAdmin (via list_editable).

Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, running the example project, and the test/lint/type-check commands.