django Admin Shortcuts

What is this?

It's a simple dashboard app that adds shortcuts to your django admin homepage. The keyword here is SIMPLE!

Why does it exist?

Because some people noted that it's sometimes hard to find the app you are looking for on the admin homepage.

"So why don't we customize the admin site a bit?"

"Nah, I don't want to go through all the hassle of editing templates or setting up a complex dashboard app ..."

Well, good thing django-admin-shortcuts is here, because it only takes five minutes of your time to go from the old dreadfully boring admin to the marvelous engineering excellence that is this app.

How do I use it?

pip install django-admin-shortcuts
add 'admin_shortcuts' to your INSTALLED_APPS, just before 'django.contrib.admin' <-- IMPORTANT
add ADMIN_SHORTCUTS to your settings

For example:

ADMIN_SHORTCUTS = [
    {
        'title': 'Shop',
        'shortcuts': [
            {
                'url_name': 'admin:shop_order_changelist',
                'title': 'Products',
                'count_new': 'project.utils.count_new_orders',
                'has_perms': 'project.utils.has_perms_to_orders',
            },
        ]
    },
]

Where ...

url_name is a name that will be resolved using django's reverse url method (see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/ref/contrib/admin/#reversing-admin-urls)

optional app_name is the name of the admin app that will be used for URL reversal. You can safely ignore this if you have only one admin site in your urls.py

optional url is a direct link that will override url_name

optional url_extra is extra stuff to be attached at the end of the url (like GET data for pre-filtering admin views)

optional title is the title of the shortcut

optional count and count_new are paths to a function inside your project that returns something interesting (like a count of all products or a count of all pending orders). The function can optionally take one argument, request, which is the current Django HttpRequest object.

optional has_perms is a path to a function inside your project that returns information about shortcut visibility on the django admin homepage. Like above, this function can optionally take one argument request as well.

optional open_new_window sets whether the link should open in a new window (default is False)

optional class is the CSS class to be added to the anchor element (if you don't specify one, magical ponies will do it for you)

profit!!
optionally, also add ADMIN_SHORTCUTS_SETTINGS to your settings

ADMIN_SHORTCUTS_SETTINGS = {
    'hide_app_list': False,
    'open_new_window': False,
}

Where ...

optional hide_app_list collapses the app list

optional open_new_window makes all shortcuts open in a new window

What are the settings used in the pretty image above?

ADMIN_SHORTCUTS = [
    {
        'shortcuts': [
            {
                'url': '/',
                'open_new_window': True,
            },
            {
                'url_name': 'admin:cms_page_changelist',
                'title': _('Pages'),
            },
            {
                'url_name': 'admin:filer_folder_changelist',
                'title': _('Files'),
            },
            {
                'url_name': 'admin:auth_user_changelist',
                'title': _('Users'),
            },
            {
                'url_name': 'admin:contactform_contactformsubmission_changelist',
                'title': _('Contact forms'),
                'count_new': 'project.utils.count_new_contactforms',
            },
        ]
    },
    {
        'title': _('Shop'),
        'shortcuts': [
            {
                'url_name': 'admin:shop_product_changelist',
                'title': _('Products'),
                'count': 'project.utils.count_products',
            },
            {
                'url_name': 'admin:shop_category_changelist',
                'title': _('Categories'),
            },
            {
                'url_name': 'admin:shop_order_changelist',
                'title': _('Orders'),
                'count_new': 'project.utils.count_new_orders',
            },
        ]
    },
]
ADMIN_SHORTCUTS_SETTINGS = {
    'hide_app_list': True,
    'open_new_window': False,
}

I want to change how stuff looks

to change the css overwrite the templates/admin_shortcuts/base.css template
to change the icons specify desired url_name to class mappings in ADMIN_SHORTCUTS_CLASS_MAPPINGS

Notes

Icons grabbed from Pixeden.com