How to set default values in TabularInline formset in Django admin

Question

How to set first default rows/values in django admin's inline?

    class Employee(models.Model):
        username = models.CharField(_('Username'), max_length=150, null=False, blank=False)
        email = models.CharField(_('Email'), max_length=150, null=False, blank=False)

    class Details(models.Model):
        employee = models.ForeignKey(Employee, verbose_name=_('Employee'), blank=False, null=False)
        label = models.CharField(_('Label'), max_length=150, null=False, blank=False)
        value = models.CharField(_('Value'), max_length=150, null=False, blank=False)


    class DetailsFormset(forms.models.BaseInlineFormSet):
        def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
                self.initial = [
{ 'label': 'first name'},  
{'label': 'last name'}, 
{'label': 'job',}]
            super(DetailsFormset, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

    class DetailsInline(admin.TabularInline):
        model = Details
        formset = DetailsFormset
        fieldsets = [
                ['', {'fields': ['employee', 'label', 'value']}]
        ]

    class EmployeeAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
        inlines = [DetailsInline]

but this row doesn't work

    self.initial = [
{ 'label': 'first name'},  
{'label': 'last name'}, 
{'label': 'job',}]

How do I set default values using django admin?

Answer 1

If what you need is to define default values for the new forms that are created you can redefine the empty_form property of a InlineFormSet:

class MyDefaultFormSet(django.forms.models.BaseInlineFormSet):
    @property
    def empty_form(self):
       form = super(MyDefaultFormSet, self).empty_form
       # you can access self.instance to get the model parent object
       form.fields['label'].initial = 'first name'
       # ...
       return form

 class DetailsInline(admin.TabularInline):
    formset = MyDefaultFormSet

Now, every time you add a new form it contains the initial data you provided it with. I've tested this on django 1.5.

Answer 2

I tried many suggestions from Stackoverflow (Django=4.x), not working for me. Here is what I did.

class MilestoneFormSet(forms.models.BaseInlineFormSet):
    model = Milestone

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(MilestoneFormSet, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        if not self.instance.pk: 
            self.initial = [
            {'stage': '1.Plan', 'description': 'Requirements gathering', },
            {'stage': '2.Define', 'description': 'Validate requirement', },
            ]

class MilestoneInline(admin.TabularInline):
    model = Milestone
    formset = MilestoneFormSet  

    def get_extra(self, request, obj=None, **kwargs):
        extra = 0  #default 0
        if not obj: #new create only
            extra = 2 #2 records defined in __init__
        return extra

I hope this works for everyone.

Answer 3

To provide a static default for all instances in the inline, I found a simpler solution that just sets it in a form:

class DetailsForm(django_forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['label'] = 'first_name'


class DetailsInline(admin.TabularInline):
    form = DetailsForm
    # ...

I think this doesn't work for the OP's particular case because each form has a different value for the 'label' field, but I hope it can be useful for anyone coming to this page in the future.