In Django, I want to be able to bulk create items with a foreign key to an object within its admin form. How do I do this?

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

So I am working on a course syllabus app. Each syllabus has one or more class meeting times, a start date, an end date. I would like to be able to automatically generate a set of class meetings for each syllabus based on this information within the admin form. The idea is simply that the user should be able to input the meeting times, start date, and end date, hit a button, and have django create inline class session objects that the user can then edit. So, for instance, if I have a class that meets every Tuesday from 1 - 3 between May 1 and September 1, I should be able to hit a button, and get class sessions--or at least class session forms, there's no reason to save them in the database until they're filled in--for every Tuesday between those dates.

The relevant model code is as follows:

class Syllabus (models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=120)
    number = models.CharField(max_length=32, blank = True)  
    start_date = models.DateField()
    end_date = models.DateField()

class DaysTime(models.Model):
    days = MultiSelectField(max_length=15, choices=WEEKDAYS)
    startTime = models.TimeField()
    endTime = models.TimeField()

    class Meta:
        abstract = True

class ClassTime(DaysTime):
    key = models.ForeignKey('Syllabus')

class EventAbstract (models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=120)
    description = models.TextField(blank = True)
    startDateTime = models.DateTimeField()
    endDateTime = models.DateTimeField(blank = True)

    class Meta:
        abstract=True

class ClassSession(EventAbstract):
    cancelled = models.BooleanField(default = False)
    syllabus = models.ForeignKey('Syllabus')
    date = models.DateField()

Generating the dates and the ClassSessions for the dates isn't the problem. Adding a button onto a custom admin template to extend change_form isn't a problem either. Because the change_form is highly generic, and does not know anything about the models it is presenting, there's no way I can see to make the button talk to the function.

So as I see it the problem is three fold:

1. How do I supply the recurring class times to the function that generates the new ClassSessionInlines?
2. How do I create them on the admin page?
3. How do I populate their fields?