django admin edit model select/prefetch_related? - django

Question

I have a Django website, with model Event, lets say:
class Event(models.Model):
home = models.ForeignKey('Team', related_name='%(class)s_home')
away = models.ForeignKey('Team', related_name='%(class)s_away')
...
class Team(models.Model):
name = models.CharField("team's name", max_length=100)
Using ForeignKeys for this was a bad idea, but anyway, how to make this usable in Django Admin page?
In admin edit event page, a ton of foreign keys is fetched for this:
http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/event/event/116255/
It produces tons of selects like:
SELECT "event_team"."id", "event_team"."name" FROM "event_team" WHERE "event_team"."id" = 346;
and page dies. I was playing with these:
class EventAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
list_display = ('id', 'home', 'away', 'date_game', 'sport', 'result')
search_fields = ['home__name', 'away__name']
list_select_related = (
'home', 'away', 'league', 'sport', ...
)
def get_queryset(self, request):
return super(EventAdmin, self).get_queryset(request).select_related(*self.list_select_related)
admin.site.register(Event, EventAdmin)
But no luck.

Answer 1

The simplest, quickest way
It would be to add raw_id_fields on your ModelAdmin (Django ModelAdmin.raw_id_fields documentation) :
class EventAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
raw_id_fields = ("home", "away")
It would result in a inputText with the FK field ids in such as :
.
Loading will be fast as it won't populate a select list with ALL the teams.
You'll have the Django admin change_view of the Team ModelAdmin to select the teams, thanks to the browse icon.
A nicer way ?
A lot more elegant on the UX side of things, it requires you to know part of the name of the team: using an ajax autocomplete widget to represent your field.
You could use for example Django Autocomplete Light (DAL) quick tutorial by having a custom form for your admin and a autocompleteModelSelect2 for your home and away fields (with 2 differents QS in the ajax view).
It will produce a field looking like:
.
The tutorial of this link have all you need!
Or you can chose another third party plugin or build your own field/widget to produce a similar result.

Answer 2

I think #ppython's answer is the simplest and works perfectly but I ended up using autocomplete_fields instead of raw_id_fields. Achieving a more friendly approach, it has been available since Django 2.0.
Following the answer, it'll be something like this:
class EventAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
autocomplete_fields = ['home', 'away']

Answer 3

I found the problem, it was my mistake and I did not even mention it in question :(
So this is my model, but I did not mention important part if it:
class Event(models.Model):
home = models.ForeignKey('Team', related_name='%(class)s_home')
away = models.ForeignKey('Team', related_name='%(class)s_away')
merged = models.ForeignKey('Event', null='True', blank='True')
def __unicode__(self):
return str(self.id) + ": " + self.home.name + " - " + self.away.name
Problem was not with home or away, but with merged field, that fetched self.home.name and self.away.name for each event.
Replaced with
def __unicode__(self):
return 'Event id: {}'.format(self.id)
and added merged to list_select_related
fixed my problem. Thanks for help and sorry for incomplete question.