Django Admin

To add, edit and delete the posts we’ve just modeled, we will use Django admin.

Let’s open the blog/admin.py file and replace its contents with this:

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Post
admin.site.register(Post)

As you can see, we import (include) the Post model defined in the previous tutorial. To make our model visible on the admin page, we need to register the model with admin.site.register(Post).

OK, time to look at our Post model. Remember to run python manage.py runserver in the console to run the web server. Go to your browser and type the address http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/. You will see a login page like this:

To log in, you need to create a superuser - a user account that has control over everything on the site. Go back to the command line, type python manage.py createsuperuser, and press enter.

Remember, to write new commands while the web server is running, open a new terminal window and activate your virtualenv. We reviewed how to write new commands in the Your first Django project! chapter, in the Starting the web server section.

Mac OS X or Linux:

(myvenv) ~/myblog$ python manage.py createsuperuser

Windows:

(myvenv) C:\Users\Name\myblog> python manage.py createsuperuser

When prompted, type your username (lowercase, no spaces), email address, and password. Don’t worry that you can’t see the password you’re typing in – that’s how it’s supposed to be. Just type it in and press enter to continue. The output should look like this (where the username and email should be your own ones):

Username: admin
Email address: admin@admin.com
Password:
Password (again):
Superuser created successfully.

Return to your browser. Log in with the superuser’s credentials you chose; you should see the Django admin dashboard.

Go to Posts and experiment a little bit with it. Add five or six blog posts. Don’t worry about the content – you can simply copy-paste some text from this tutorial to save time. :)

Make sure that at least two or three posts (but not all) have the publish date set. It will be helpful later.

If you want to know more about Django admin, you should check Django’s documentation: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/ref/contrib/admin/

If you’re using Django 1.11, use the following link instead: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/contrib/admin/

Great, now it’s time to go onto URL’s. Let’s do a few questions to check your understand and then we’ll jump to the next tutorial to see how URLs work in Django.

This is probably a good moment to grab a coffee (or tea) or something to eat to re-energize yourself. You created your first Django model – you deserve a little break!