Import excel data into models via django admin

Question

I need the Django Admin interface to accept administrator uploads of Excel files where the data in each Excel file is inserted into my database models. How can I make such an “Upload” button appear on a Django model admin page, where clicking the button asks the administrator to choose an .xls file, whose data then gets added to database once its upload is complete?

Answer 1

I have done this, but I just set up a simple view with a file upload (actually this makes more sense than adding it directly into a Django admin page, as one edit page = one model instance,and I assume that your excel contains multiple models).

in forms.py, a simple form with a file upload field

class ImportExcelForm(forms.Form):
    file  = forms.FileField(label= "Choose excel to upload")    

in views.py, a view to process the upload

def test_flowcell(request):
    c = RequestContext(request, {'other_context':'details here'})
    if request.method == 'POST': # If the form has been submitted...
        form = ImportExcelForm(request.POST,  request.FILES) # A form bound to the POST data
        if form.is_valid(): # All validation rules pass
            excel_parser= ExcelParser()
            success, log  = excel_parser.read_excel(request.FILES['file'] )
            if success:
                return redirect(reverse('admin:index') + "pages/flowcell_good/") ## redirects to aliquot page ordered by the most recent
            else:
                errors = '* Problem with flowcell * <br><br>log details below:<br>' + "<br>".join(log)
                c['errors'] = mark_safe(errors)
        else:
            c['errors'] = form.errors 
    else:
        form = ImportExcelForm() # An unbound form
    c['form'] = form
    return render_to_response('sequencing/file_upload.html')

and as suggested in the other post use xlrd to read the data in from the excel file. I have a separate file ExcelParser.py for this

import xlrd 

class ExcelParser(object, excel_name):
    @transaction.commit_on_success        
    def read_excel(self):
        wb = xlrd.open_workbook(excel_name)

        ...
        do your parsing in here.....
        ...

(May I add, that excel is a terrible, and error prone way to import data. I do a lot of it at my work, and am trying to convince management that there are far better solutions.)