Changing default form Field instance for given database Field in Django admin

3.8.2009

First let me try to sum up the reason why I wanted to change the default form Field for given database Field.
In one of my web pages, I have a model which consists of multiple TextFields, and on some of them I want to use TinyMCE, but not on all of them. So I needed to add a class to the textarea, so TinyMCE doesen’t manipulate that textarea.
So to add a class to the textarea, I needed to tweak/change the widget of this particular database Fields instance. To achive this I overrided formfield_for_dbfield method in my ModelAdmin like this:

    def formfield_for_dbfield(self, db_field, **kwargs):

        """

        Hook for specifying the form Field instance for a given database Field

        instance.

        """

        if db_field.name == ‘head’:

            kwargs[‘widget’] = Textarea(attrs={‘class’:‘mceNoEditor’})

            return db_field.formfield(**kwargs)

        else:

            return super(PageAdmin, self).formfield_for_dbfield(db_field, **kwargs)

This code check if the db_field’s name attribute is head, if it is - it returns a twealed form Field instance, else it calls the parent ( original ) method.

Note: Works on Django 1.0.x, haven’t tested it in 1.1