How to change the Django admin filter to use a dropdown instead of list?

Question

If, for a field that you want to filter by, you have more than ~10 values, the filtering sidebar starts to be ugly and harder to use.

I\'m looking for a solution to

Answer 1

Use filter.html from feincms

{% load i18n %}
<script type="text/javascript">var go_from_select = function(opt) { window.location = window.location.pathname + opt };</script>
<h3>{{ title }}</h3>
<ul class="admin-filter-{{ title|cut:' ' }}">
{% if choices|slice:"4:" %}
    <li>
    <select style="width: 95%;"
        onchange="go_from_select(this.options[this.selectedIndex].value)">
    {% for choice in choices %}
        <option{% if choice.selected %} selected="selected"{% endif %}
         value="{{ choice.query_string|iriencode }}">{{ choice.display }}</option>
    {% endfor %}
    </select>
    </li>
{% else %}

    {% for choice in choices %}
            <li{% if choice.selected %} class="selected"{% endif %}>
            <a href="{{ choice.query_string|iriencode }}">{{ choice.display }}</a></li>
    {% endfor %}

{% endif %}
</ul>

Answer 2

Thanks @beholderrk, @gediminas and @jk-laiho! I packaged this into a reusable app.

Install:

pip install django-admin-list-filter-dropdown

Enable in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'django_admin_listfilter_dropdown',
    ...
)

Use in admin.py:

from django_admin_listfilter_dropdown.filters import (
    DropdownFilter, ChoiceDropdownFilter, RelatedDropdownFilter
)

class EntityAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    ...
    list_filter = (
        # for ordinary fields
        ('a_charfield', DropdownFilter),
        # for choice fields
        ('a_choicefield', ChoiceDropdownFilter),
        # for related fields
        ('a_foreignkey_field', RelatedDropdownFilter),
    )

Here's what it looks like:

Answer 3

The best solution is to create a new template in admin/filter.html and implement the HTML code suggested by @beholderrk. Just implemented it for a client and it works great.

Problem with DropdownFilter and RelatedDropdownFilter is that it loses the proper display. Instead of the translated strings for Charfield(choices=xxx), it will show True, False and so on.