A global/site search modal for the Django admin.

• 🎩 Works out-of-the-box, with minimal config.
• 🔎 Search performed on:
  • App labels.
  • Model labels and field attributes.
  • CharField values (with __icontains).
    • Subclasses also included: SlugField, URLField, etc.
• 🔒 Built-in auth: users can only search apps and models that they have permission to view.
• ⚡ Results appear on-type, with throttling/debouncing to avoid excessive requests.
• 🎹 Keyboard navigation (cmd+k, up/down, enter).
• ✨ Responsive, and supports dark/light mode.
  • Django's built-in CSS vars are used to match your admin theme.

• Python 3.7 - 3.12.
• Django 3.2 - 5.0.

1. Install with your package manager, e.g. pip install django-admin-site-search.
2. Add admin_site_search to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

1. If you haven't already, override/extend the default AdminSite.
2. Add the AdminSiteSearchView to your AdminSite:

from django.contrib import admin
from admin_site_search.views import AdminSiteSearchView

class MyAdminSite(AdminSiteSearchView, admin.AdminSite):
    ...

By default, the search route is at <admin_path>/search/. The last part can be changed by overriding the site_search_path class variable in your admin site.

1. If you haven't already, create admin/base_site.html in your templates/ directory.
   • Note: if your templates/ directory is inside of an app, then that app must appear in INSTALLED_APPS before your custom admin app.
2. Include the admin_site_search templates:

{% extends "admin/base_site.html" %}

{% block extrahead %}
    {% include 'admin_site_search/head.html' %}
    {{ block.super }}
{% endblock %}

{% block footer %}
    {{ block.super }}
    {% include 'admin_site_search/modal.html' %}
{% endblock %}

{% block usertools %}
    {% include 'admin_site_search/button.html' %}
    {{ block.super }}
{% endblock %}

• Along with styles, admin_site_search/head.html loads Alpine JS.
  • This is bundled into /static/, to avoid external dependencies.
• The placement of modal.html and button.html are not strict, though the former would ideally be in a top-level position.
  • Django 4.x exposes {% block header %} - this is preferable to footer.

Methods in AdminSiteSearchView can be extended to add custom logic.

def match_app(self, query: str, name: str) -> bool:
    """DEFAULT: case-insensitive match the app name"""
    ...

def match_model(
    self, query: str, name: str, object_name: str, fields: List[Field]
) -> bool:
    """DEFAULT: case-insensitive match the model and field attributes"""
    ...

def match_objects(
    self, query: str, model_class: Model, model_fields: List[Field]
) -> QuerySet:
    """DEFAULT: Returns the QuerySet after performing an OR filter across all Char fields in the model."""
    ...

def filter_field(self, query: str, field: Field) -> Optional[Q]:
    """DEFAULT: Returns a Q 'icontains' filter for Char fields, otherwise None"""
    ...

def get_model_class(self, app_label: str, model_dict: dict) -> Optional[Model]:
    """DEFAULT: Retrieve the model class from the dict created by admin.AdminSite"""
    ...

Add TextField results to search.

from django.contrib import admin
from django.db.models import Q, Field, TextField
from admin_site_search.views import AdminSiteSearchView


class MyAdminSite(AdminSiteSearchView, admin.AdminSite):
    ...  
  
    def filter_field(self, query: str, field: Field) -> Optional[Q]:
        """Extends super() to add TextField support to site search"""
        if isinstance(field, TextField):
            return Q(**{f"{field.name}__icontains": query})
        return super().filter_field(query, field)

Note that this isn't done by default for performance reasons: __icontains on a large number of text entries is inefficient.