django-oml

OML means Object Moderation Layer — a mixin model that lets you add content moderation (pending / accepted / rejected states) to any Django model.

Example app

A runnable blog demo with Article and Comment as moderated models is available at github.com/angvp/oml-example.

Installation

pip install django-oml

Add 'oml' to INSTALLED_APPS before django.contrib.admin and run migrate:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'oml',  # before django.contrib.admin
    'django.contrib.admin',
    ...
]

Configuration

Add an OML_CONFIG dictionary to your Django settings:

OML_CONFIG = {
    # Set True to let certain groups bypass moderation
    'OML_EXCLUDE_MODERATED': True,

    # List of group IDs that skip the moderation queue
    'OML_EXCLUDED_GROUPS': [],
}

Usage

Inherit from ModeratedModel:

from oml.models import ModeratedModel

class Article(ModeratedModel):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)

The model gains:

• status field ('p' pending / 'a' accepted / 'r' rejected)
• authorized_by FK to the user who last moderated the object
• status_date DateTimeField of the last moderation action
• .objects.accepted(), .pending(), .rejected() queryset shortcuts
• .accept(user) and .reject(user) methods

Admin integration

Use ModelAdminOml to get moderation features out of the box:

from oml.admin import ModelAdminOml

@admin.register(Article)
class ArticleAdmin(ModelAdminOml):
    pass

This gives you automatically:

• status, authorized_by, and status_date columns in the changelist
• A Status filter in the sidebar
• Accept selected and Reject selected bulk actions

reject on a pending object with no prior accepted state will delete the object. The bulk action shows a warning with the count of deleted objects.

Moderation panel

A cross-model panel that lists all pending items across every ModeratedModel subclass in your project.

1. Include the OML URLs in your project's urls.py:

from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    path('admin/oml/', include('oml.urls')),
]

2. Visit /admin/oml/moderation/. The panel is restricted to staff users.

The panel supports:

• Filtering by content type via ?ct_filter=<model_name>
• Per-item Approve / Edit / Reject actions
• Bulk approve via checkbox selection
• Pagination (50 items per page)

Template tag

The panel is rendered via an inclusion tag you can embed in your own templates:

{% load oml_tags %}
{% get_content_for_approval request %}

This renders admin/oml/pending_content.html, which you can override in your project's template directory.

Running the tests

pip install pytest pytest-django
pytest

Compatibility

• Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13, 3.14
• Django 4.2 (LTS), 5.1, 5.2 (LTS), 6.0

Why did we revamp this?

The original django-oml was written in 2013 and last released in 2015. It was archived on GitHub in 2023 with no forks and no active successors.

The codebase still worked conceptually, but it had accumulated a decade of bit-rot: Python 2-only idioms (ugettext_lazy, __unicode__, MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES), missing on_delete arguments that Django 2.0 made mandatory, a silent bug in the group-exclusion logic that made the feature completely non-functional, and a test suite built on abandoned tools (nose, django-nose). None of it would import cleanly on a modern Django project.

Rather than throw it away and start over — or accept that content moderation simply has no maintained, lightweight option in the Django ecosystem — we chose to modernize it in place. The logic was sound; it just needed to catch up with ten years of Django evolution.

Alternatives

These are the other packages that cover similar ground. We looked at all of them before deciding to revamp django-oml.

As of June 2026, no actively maintained package provides a simple mixin-based moderation layer compatible with Django 4.2+. django-oml 0.1.0 fills that gap. Django 6.1 support will be added once it reaches a stable release.