Readonly models in Django admin interface?

Question

How can I make a model completely read-only in the admin interface? It's for a kind of log table, where I'm using the admin features to search, sort, filter etc, but there is no need to modify the log.

In case this looks like a duplicate, here's not what I'm trying to do:

• I'm not looking for readonly fields (even making every field readonly would still let you create new records)
• I'm not looking to create a readonly user: every user should be readonly.

Answer 1

The admin is for editing, not just viewing (you won't find a "view" permission). In order to achieve what you want you'll have to forbid adding, deleting, and make all fields readonly:

class MyAdmin(ModelAdmin):

    def has_add_permission(self, request, obj=None):
        return False

    def has_delete_permission(self, request, obj=None):
        return False

(if you forbid changing you won't even get to see the objects)

For some untested code that tries to automate setting all fields read-only see my answer to Whole model as read-only

EDIT: also untested but just had a look at my LogEntryAdmin and it has

readonly_fields = MyModel._meta.get_all_field_names()

Don't know if that will work in all cases.

EDIT: QuerySet.delete() may still bulk delete objects. To get around this, provide your own "objects" manager and corresponding QuerySet subclass which doesn't delete - see Overriding QuerySet.delete() in Django