How To Edit ManyToManyField In Django Admin list Display Page

In this article, you will get an idea about, how to make a ManyToMany field editable in the Django admin list display page.

Django by default won’t allow to add ManyToMany field in list_editable in ModelAdmin. So we need to override model admin methods.

Please follow the below steps to get the ManyToMany field editable on the list display page.

Let us consider below models defined in app/models.py

class Genre(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=250, unique=True)


class Movie(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=250)
    genre = models.ManyToManyField(Genre)

For making genre editable in list display of movie model, 

In apps/forms.py  you need to define which ManyToMany fields you need to make editable in list display page. As below,

from django import forms
from app.models import Genre


class MovieChangeListForm(forms.ModelForm):
    
    # here we only need to define the field we want to be editable
    genre = forms.ModelMultipleChoiceField(queryset=Genre.objects.all(), required=False)

In app/admin.py  you need to override methods of model admin. As below, 

from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.admin.views.main import ChangeList
from app.models import Movie
from app.forms import MovieChangeListForm

class MovieChangeList(ChangeList):

    def __init__(self, request, model, list_display, list_display_links,
            list_filter, date_hierarchy, search_fields, list_select_related,
            list_per_page, list_max_show_all, list_editable, model_admin):

        super(MovieChangeList, self).__init__(request, model, list_display, list_display_links,
            list_filter, date_hierarchy, search_fields, list_select_related,
            list_per_page, list_max_show_all, list_editable, model_admin)
        
        # these need to be defined here, and not in MovieAdmin
        self.list_display = ['action_checkbox', 'name', 'genre']
        self.list_display_links = ['name']
        self.list_editable = ['genre']


class MovieAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):

    def get_changelist(self, request, **kwargs):
        return MovieChangeList

    def get_changelist_form(self, request, **kwargs):
        return MovieChangeListForm

Now you all set to check the changes, run server and check django admin for Movie model. You can edit ManyToMany field directly from list display page.

Note : If you are going to use muliptle ManyToManyFields editable in list then, you need to set DATA_UPLOAD_MAX_NUMBER_FIELDS in settings.py .

All the best & cheers !!