Django admin tricks I use weekly

TL;DR

• list_select_related is free performance.
• autocomplete_fields beats raw_id_fields for FK pickers with many rows.
• A readonly_fields block stops accidental edits to billing/audit columns.
• actions are a CLI you didn't have to ship.

list_select_related

The single biggest perf win. If your changelist shows fields from a related model, set this and the N+1 disappears.

class InvoiceAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ("id", "tenant", "amount", "status")
    list_select_related = ("tenant",)

autocomplete_fields

FK pickers with thousands of rows are unusable as dropdowns. Switching to autocomplete is one line:

class DocumentAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    autocomplete_fields = ("tenant", "owner")

The target admin needs search_fields set. That's the only catch.

Read-only audit columns

Audit fields (created_at, created_by, stripe_customer_id) should never be hand-edited from the admin. Make it impossible:

readonly_fields = ("created_at", "created_by", "stripe_customer_id")

Admin actions as throwaway CLIs

Need a one-off "re-send onboarding email to these users"? Don't write a management command — write an action:

@admin.action(description="Re-send onboarding email")
def resend_onboarding(modeladmin, request, queryset):
    for user in queryset.iterator():
        send_onboarding_email.delay(user.id)

Five lines, gated by admin permissions, audit-logged by Django for free.

The taste rule

If you find yourself shelling into production to fix a row by hand: you've discovered an admin feature you should have built.