Django SmartBase Admin

A modern, modular, and developer-friendly admin interface for Django.
Built to speed up development of internal tools and admin panels — beautifully and efficiently.

✨ Features

• Fast integration with any Django project
• Improved performance of Django List Admin using SBAdminField, database annotate() and values() to avoid direct object access
• Simple configuration of menu structure, dashboard components, and permissions per user role
• Enhanced Django List Admin filters: autocomplete support for related fields and filtering across all model fields
• Ability for users to save and reuse custom filters in Django List Admin
• Improved Django Detail Admin with autocomplete for relational fields
• Support for "FakeInlines" – define inline-like blocks without requiring a direct model relationship
• Easy extension of list and detail views with custom actions and corresponding views
• Beautiful modern UI (Tailwind CSS)
• Responsive & mobile-friendly
• End-user ready for building SaaS or similar projects with global queryset configuration
• Built-in audit logging — automatically tracks all admin create, update, and delete operations with full change history, snapshots, and request grouping

📚 Full Documentation (in progress)

🗂 View Full Docs

🌐 Live Demo

Want to see it in action?
👉 Check out the live demo

Login credentials:

• Admin role: admin / admin
• Editor role: editor / editor

⚡ Quick Start

1. Install Smartbase Admin

Begin by installing the Smartbase Admin package using pip:

pip install django-smartbase-admin

PostgreSQL is the recommended database (install psycopg for it). SQLite works without it, and Postgres-only features such as array fields are then unavailable.

Ensure that django-smartbase-admin and its dependencies are included in your Django settings. Open your settings.py file and add the following to INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # other apps
    "django_smartbase_admin",
    "easy_thumbnails",
    "widget_tweaks",
    "ckeditor",
    "ckeditor_uploader",
    "nested_admin",
]

ckeditor_uploader requires an upload directory, relative to MEDIA_ROOT:

CKEDITOR_UPLOAD_PATH = "uploads/"

2. Add Admin URL Configuration

In your project’s urls.py, register the Smartbase Admin site by importing sb_admin_site and adding the path:

from django_smartbase_admin.admin.site import sb_admin_site

urlpatterns = [
    path("sb-admin/", sb_admin_site.urls),
    # other paths
]

This makes the Smartbase Admin interface accessible at /sb-admin/

3. Define the SmartBase Admin Configuration

Create a file called sbadmin_config.py in your project package, next to settings.py (for example mysite/sbadmin_config.py), with the following content:

from django_smartbase_admin.engine.configuration import SBAdminConfigurationBase, SBAdminRoleConfiguration
from django_smartbase_admin.views.dashboard_view import SBAdminDashboardView
from django_smartbase_admin.engine.menu_item import SBAdminMenuItem

config = SBAdminRoleConfiguration(
    default_view=SBAdminMenuItem(view_id="dashboard"),
    menu_items=[
        SBAdminMenuItem(view_id="dashboard", icon="All-application"),
    ],
    registered_views=[
        SBAdminDashboardView(widgets=[], title="Dashboard"),
    ],
)

class SBAdminConfiguration(SBAdminConfigurationBase):
    def get_configuration_for_roles(self, user_roles):
        return config

4. Reference the Configuration in settings.py

Use the dotted path of the file you created in step 3. With mysite/sbadmin_config.py:

SB_ADMIN_CONFIGURATION = "mysite.sbadmin_config.SBAdminConfiguration"

If the path is wrong, manage.py check reports sbadmin.E001.

5. Add Locale Middleware

Add the following middleware to support internationalization:

MIDDLEWARE = [
    # Other middleware...
    'django.middleware.locale.LocaleMiddleware',
]

Enable Django i18n URLs so {% url 'set_language' %} is available for the navigation language picker:

from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    path("i18n/", include("django.conf.urls.i18n")),
]

🔍 Audit Logging

Built-in optional audit app that automatically tracks all admin create, update, delete, and bulk operations with field-level diffs, snapshots, and request grouping. Just add "django_smartbase_admin.audit" to INSTALLED_APPS and run migrations.

See AGENTS.md — Audit Logging for setup and configuration.

🤖 AI/Developer Reference

See AGENTS.md for development patterns, gotchas, and AI assistant instructions.

🤝 Need Help with Development?

We at SmartBase are experts in Django and custom software.

Whether you're building a new platform or modernizing an internal tool — 💡 We can help you design, build, and scale it.

📬 Let's talk — We'd love to work with you.