DjangoQL

Advanced search language for Django, with auto-completion. Supports logical operators, parenthesis, table joins, and works with any Django model. Tested on Python 3.10–3.14, Django 5.2 and 6.0. The auto-completion feature has been tested in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE9+.

This is a community fork. djangoql-iplweb is a fork of the original DjangoQL by ivelum — install the upstream package from djangoql on PyPI. This fork adds internationalization (i18n) of error messages and modernized packaging/tooling.

These changes are offered back to the upstream project. If the original maintainers merge them, please switch back to the upstream djangoql package — this fork exists only to make the improvements available in the meantime, and will defer to upstream once they land there.

It is published on PyPI as djangoql-iplweb, but the import name stays djangoql (so INSTALLED_APPS and import djangoql are unchanged).

See a video: DjangoQL demo

Features

• Python-like query syntax: logical operators (and, or), parenthesis, and the full set of comparison operators
• Searches across model relations via joins, e.g. author.last_name = "Tolstoy"
• Works with any Django model and drops into the Django admin with a single mixin
• Live auto-completion of model field names and values in the admin
• Configurable schema to restrict searchable models/fields and provide suggestion options
• Custom search fields for annotations and fully custom search logic
• Internationalized error messages with translation catalogs for 11 locales
• Usable outside the Django admin, including a standalone JavaScript completion widget
• Multi-line queries — Shift+Enter inserts a newline (Enter still submits)
• Pretty-print / formatting — re-indent a query via format_query() or the …/format/ endpoint
• Per-branch record counts — see how many rows each sub-expression matches via explain() or the …/explain/ endpoint
• Syntax highlighting — a tokenizer (DjangoQLHighlight.tokenize) plus a lightweight, restyleable overlay; no palette or editor imposed
• Describe a schema for an LLM — describe_schema_for_llm() (and the djangoql_describe_schema_for_llm command) emit the full search space as JSON or compact text, ready to teach a model to generate valid DjangoQL

Installation

Using uv (recommended):

$ uv add djangoql-iplweb

Using pip:

$ pip install djangoql-iplweb

Add 'djangoql' to INSTALLED_APPS in your settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'djangoql',
    ...
]

For full setup instructions and usage examples, see the Documentation below.

Documentation

📖 Full documentation: https://iplweb.github.io/djangoql-iplweb/

The site is built with MkDocs from the docs/ directory. Key pages:

• Installation — complete setup guide
• Django admin integration — DjangoQLSearchMixin and admin search modes
• Language reference — query syntax, operators, and examples
• Schema & custom fields — restrict searchable models/fields, custom search fields
• Describe schema for an LLM — emit the search space as JSON or compact text to teach a model to generate DjangoQL
• Derived fields — date/time parts, relation aggregates, custom search logic
• Outside the admin — DjangoQLQuerySet and apply_search()
• Multi-line queries — Shift+Enter newline support
• Pretty-print / formatting — format_query() and the format endpoint
• Query breakdown (counts) — per-branch record counts with explain()
• Syntax highlighting — tokenizer + overlay, bring-your-own colours/editor
• Completion widget — standalone JS widget outside the admin
• Example project — runnable demo of all of the above
• Internationalization — i18n support and supplied locales

Example project

A runnable demo of all the features above (on a richly related dataset) lives in example_project/. See its README for details. Quick start:

cd example_project
uv run python manage.py migrate
uv run python manage.py seed_demo          # lots of related demo data
uv run python manage.py createsuperuser    # optional, for the admin
uv run python manage.py runserver

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8000/ (search demo — auto-completion, multi-line, highlighting, Format, Explain counts) or http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/ (admin with completion + multi-line + the highlight overlay).

What it looks like

Running a query — live syntax highlighting and results:

The Format button re-indents a query (syntax highlighting throughout):

Explain counts breaks an empty result down per sub-expression, so you can see where the data runs out — here each side matches ~500 rows but their and matches none:

Syntax errors are pinpointed in the query box:

Supported by

This fork is graciously supported and maintained by iplweb.

License

MIT