Override save_model on Django InlineModelAdmin

Question

I have a model that has a user field that needs to be auto-populated from the currently logged in user. I can get it working as specified here if the user

Answer 1

I had a similar issue with a user field I was trying to populate in an inline model. In my case, the parent model also had the user field defined so I overrode save on the child model as follows:

class inline_model:
    parent = models.ForeignKey(parent_model)
    modified_by = models.ForeignKey(User,editable=False) 
    def save(self,*args,**kwargs):
        self.modified_by = self.parent.modified_by
        super(inline_model,self).save(*args,**kwargs)

The user field was originally auto-populated on the parent model by overriding save_model in the ModelAdmin for the parent model and assigning

obj.modified_by = request.user

Keep in mind that if you also have a stand-alone admin page for the child model you will need some other mechanism to keep the parent and child modified_by fields in sync (e.g. you could override save_model on the child ModelAdmin and update/save the modified_by field on the parent before calling save on the child).

I haven't found a good way to handle this if the user is not in the parent model. I don't know how to retrieve request.user using signals (e.g. post_save), but maybe someone else can give more detail on this.