Today I learned how to import records into Django with Django-Import-Export. I’ve used the library for exporting and quite liked it, so I thought I’d give it a shot at importing.
Set up was easy since I already had export set up. I simply added import_export.admin.ImportMixin as a mixin to my admin model.
I’ve been using a dynamic model to register everything. Now that model looks like this:
from import_export.admin import ImportExportMixin
def register_admin_for_models(
model: Type[Model],
in_list_display: list[str] | None = None,
in_list_filter: list[str] | None = None,
):
"""
This function registers an admin model given the configuration.
Args:
model (models): The model
in_list_display (list[str] | None): The list of fields to display in the admin UI. If None, then all
fields provided by model._meta.fields are displayed.
in_list_filter (list[str] | None): List of filters
"""
# Convert everything to tuples to avoid mutation
default_list_display = ("__str__",) + tuple(
field.name for field in model._meta.fields
)
readonly_fields = []
base_readonly_fields = ["id", "created_at", "updated_at", "version"]
for field in base_readonly_fields:
if field in default_list_display:
readonly_fields.append(field)
the_readonly_fields = tuple(readonly_fields)
the_list_display = tuple(in_list_display or default_list_display)
the_list_filter = tuple(in_list_filter or [])
class DynamicAdmin(ImportExportMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):
list_display = the_list_display
list_filter = the_list_filter
readonly_fields = the_readonly_fields
admin.site.register(model, DynamicAdmin)
models_for_admin: list[Any] = [
(models.Tag, ()),
]
for values in models_for_admin:
register_admin_for_models(*values) # type: ignore
It’s not the prettiest, but it works.
Now when I navigate to a model in the Django admin UI, there’s an import button for importing a file. I used the CSV import but saw options for json, yaml, xls, xlsx, and tsv.
One strange thing I found was that I needed every field in the CSV. I was hoping that if a field was missing, then it’d use the default value the model. This wasn’t a show-stopper, but it was annoying for the system-managed fields like created_at and updated_at (but as it turned out, those fields were overwritten at import time.)
I also found that leaving id blank meant it was auto-incremented as expected, but it was interesting that it was needed as a header in the file.
I was then pleased that there was a neat workflow for evaluating errors before importing, a nice confirmation screen, and a generally great experience. I’ll definitely keep using this.