Django Admin - Overriding the widget of a custom form field

Question

Hi All,

I have a custom TagField form field.

class TagField(forms.CharField):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(TagField, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.widget = forms.TextInput(attrs={'class':'tag_field'})

As seen above, it uses a TextInput form field widget. But in admin I would like it to be displayed using Textarea widget. For this, there is formfield_overrides hook but it does not work for this case.

The admin declaration is:

class ProductAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    ...
    formfield_overrides = {
        TagField: {'widget': admin.widgets.AdminTextareaWidget},
    }

This has no effect on the form field widget and tags are still rendered with a TextInput widget.

Any help is much appreciated.

--
omat

Answer 1

Try to change your field like this:

class TagField(forms.CharField):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.widget = forms.TextInput(attrs={'class':'tag_field'})
        super(TagField, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

This would allow to use the widget which comes from **kwargs. Otherwise your field will always use form.TextInput widget.