The django-admin-tools menu and menu items API

This section describe the API of the django-admin-tools menu and menu items. Make sure you read this before creating your custom menu.

The Menu class

class admin_tools.menu.Menu(**kwargs)

This is the base class for creating custom navigation menus. A menu can have the following properties:

template

A string representing the path to template to use to render the menu. As for any other template, the path must be relative to one of the directories of your TEMPLATE_DIRS setting. Default value: “admin_tools/menu/menu.html”.

children

A list of children menu items. All children items mus be instances of the MenuItem class.

If you want to customize the look of your menu and it’s menu items, you can declare css stylesheets and/or javascript files to include when rendering the menu, for example:

from admin_tools.menu import Menu

class MyMenu(Menu):
    class Media:
        css = ('/media/css/mymenu.css',)
        js = ('/media/js/mymenu.js',)

Here’s a concrete example of a custom menu:

from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse
from admin_tools.menu import items, Menu

class MyMenu(Menu):
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        super(MyMenu, self).__init__(**kwargs)
        self.children.append(
            items.MenuItem(title='Home', url=reverse('admin:index'))
        )
        self.children.append(
            items.AppList(title='Applications')
        )
        self.children.append(
            items.MenuItem(
                title='Multi level menu item',
                children=[
                    items.MenuItem(title='Child 1', url='/foo/'),
                    items.MenuItem(title='Child 2', url='/bar/'),
                ]
            ),
        )

Below is a screenshot of the resulting menu:

init_with_context(context)

Sometimes you may need to access context or request variables to build your menu, this is what the init_with_context() method is for. This method is called just before the display with a django.template.RequestContext as unique argument, so you can access to all context variables and to the django.http.HttpRequest.

The MenuItem class

class admin_tools.menu.items.MenuItem(**kwargs)

This is the base class for custom menu items. A menu item can have the following properties:

title

String that contains the menu item title, make sure you use the django gettext functions if your application is multilingual. Default value: ‘Untitled menu item’.

url

String that contains the menu item URL. Default value: ‘#’.

css_classes

A list of css classes to be added to the menu item li class attribute. Default value: [].

accesskey

The menu item accesskey. Default value: None.

description

An optional string that will be used as the title attribute of the menu-item a tag. Default value: None.

enabled

Boolean that determines whether the menu item is enabled or not. Disabled items are displayed but are not clickable. Default value: True.

template

The template to use to render the menu item. Default value: ‘admin_tools/menu/item.html’.

children

A list of children menu items. All children items must be instances of the MenuItem class.

init_with_context(context)

Like for menus, menu items have a init_with_context method that is called with a django.template.RequestContext instance as unique argument. This gives you enough flexibility to build complex items, for example, let’s build a “history” menu item, that will list the last ten visited pages:

from admin_tools.menu.items import MenuItem

class HistoryMenuItem(MenuItem):
    def init_with_context(self, context):
        self.title = 'History'
        request = context['request']
        # we use sessions to store the visited pages stack
        history = request.session.get('history', [])
        for item in history:
            self.children.append(MenuItem(
                title=item['title'],
                url=item['url']
            ))
        # add the current page to the history
        history.insert(0, {
            'title': context['title'],
            'url': request.META['PATH_INFO']
        })
        if len(history) > 10:
            history = history[:10]
        request.session['history'] = history

Here’s a screenshot of our history item:

is_empty()

Helper method that returns True if the menu item is empty. This method always returns False for basic items, but can return True if the item is an AppList.

is_selected(request)

Helper method that returns True if the menu item is active. A menu item is considered as active if it’s URL or one of its descendants URL is equals to the current URL.

The AppList class

class admin_tools.menu.items.AppList(**kwargs)

A menu item that lists installed apps an their models. In addition to the parent MenuItem properties, the AppList has two extra properties:

exclude_list

A list of apps to exclude, if an app name (e.g. “django.contrib.auth” starts with an element of this list (e.g. “django.contrib”) it won’t appear in the menu item.

include_list

A list of apps to include, only apps whose name (e.g. “django.contrib.auth”) starts with one of the strings (e.g. “django.contrib”) in the list will appear in the menu item.

If no include/exclude list is provided, all apps are shown.

Here’s a small example of building an app list menu item:

from admin_tools.menu import items, Menu

class MyMenu(Menu):
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        super(MyMenu, self).__init__(**kwargs)
        self.children.append(items.AppList(
            title='Applications',
            exclude_list=('django.contrib',)
        )

The screenshot of what this code produces:

Note

Note that this module takes into account user permissions, as a consequence, if a user has no rights to change or add a Group for example, the django.contrib.auth.Group model child item won’t be displayed in the menu item.

init_with_context(context)

Please refer to the init_with_context() documentation from MenuItem class.

is_empty()

Helper method that returns True if the applist menu item has no children.

>>> from admin_tools.menu.items import MenuItem, AppList
>>> item = AppList(title='My menu item')
>>> item.is_empty()
True
>>> item.children.append(MenuItem(title='foo'))
>>> item.is_empty()
False
>>> item.children = []
>>> item.is_empty()
True

The Bookmarks class

class admin_tools.menu.items.Bookmarks(**kwargs)

A menu item that lists pages bookmarked by the user. This menu item also adds an extra button to the menu that allows the user to bookmark or un-bookmark the current page.

Here’s a small example of adding a bookmark menu item:

from admin_tools.menu import items, Menu

class MyMenu(Menu):
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        super(MyMenu, self).__init__(**kwargs)
        self.children.append(items.Bookmarks(title='My bookmarks'))

init_with_context(context)

Please refer to the init_with_context() documentation from MenuItem class.

is_selected(request)

A bookmark menu item is never considered as active, the real item is.