Custom user model's ModelAdmin must define "search_fields",

[ahcm]

Hi,

upgrading from Django 2 I get:

$ ../venv/bin/python webportal/manage.py makemigrations
SystemCheckError: System check identified some issues:

ERRORS:
<class 'filer.admin.fileadmin.FileAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by FileAdmin.autocomplete_fields.
<class 'filer.admin.folderadmin.FolderAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by FolderAdmin.autocomplete_fields.
<class 'filer.admin.imageadmin.ImageAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by ImageAdmin.autocomplete_fields.

These seem to define search_fields though.

Thanks !

Best
Andreas

[fsbraun]

@ahcm I cannot reproduce this. Can you give some version info?

[ahcm]

I can fix it by adding a value to search_fields to ModelAdmin in django.contrib.admin.options.
Changing search_fields = () to search_fields=('foo',).

Python 3.11.2
django-filer 3.1.3
django 5.0.6

[fsbraun]

Any other packages updated that might interfere with the admin?

[ahcm]

Installed apps are plenty:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
# added below 1 line for the accounts app
'accounts.apps.AccountsConfig',
# added below 1 line for the contact app
'contact.apps.ContactConfig',
# added below 1 line for the observations app
'observations.apps.ObservationsConfig',
# added below 1 line for the surveys app
'surveys.apps.SurveysConfig',
# added below 1 line for the pages app
'pages.apps.PagesConfig',
# added below 1 line for the map app
'map.apps.MapConfig',
# added below 1 line for the lexicon app
'lexicon.apps.LexiconConfig',
# added below 1 line for the wiki app
'wiki.apps.WikiConfig',
# added below 1 line for the offline interface
'offline.apps.OfflineConfig',
# added below 1 line for the news app
'news.apps.NewsConfig',
# added below 1 line for the messenger app
'messenger.apps.MessengerConfig',
# added below 1 line for the api interface
'api.apps.ApiConfig',
# added below 1 line for newsletter app
'newsletter',
# added below 5 lines for Django CMS
'django.contrib.sites',
'cms',
'menus',
'treebeard',
'djangocms_admin_style',
# added below 6 lines for Django CMS
'django.contrib.admin',
'django.contrib.auth',
'django.contrib.contenttypes',
'django.contrib.sessions',
'django.contrib.messages',
'django.contrib.staticfiles',
'djangocms_text_ckeditor',
'djangocms_link',
'djangocms_file',
'djangocms_picture',
'djangocms_video',
'djangocms_googlemap',
'djangocms_snippet',
'djangocms_style',
'djangocms_column',
'djangocms_icon',
# added below 15 lines for Django CMS Bootstrap 4
'djangocms_bootstrap4',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_alerts',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_badge',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_card',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_carousel',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_collapse',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_content',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_grid',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_jumbotron',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_link',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_listgroup',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_media',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_picture',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_tabs',
'djangocms_bootstrap4.contrib.bootstrap4_utilities',
# geo-django gis functionality
'django.contrib.gis',
# added below 1 line to enable multiple selection https://github.com/goinnn/django-multiselectfield
'multiselectfield',
# added below 1 line for crispy forms from Bootstrap https://github.com/django-crispy-forms/django-crispy-forms
'crispy_forms',
# added below 1 line for adding captcha on the contact form captcha https://github.com/mbi/django-simple-captcha
'captcha',
# added below 2 lines for REST API
'rest_framework',
'rest_framework.authtoken',
# added below 1 line for newsletter subscription https://github.com/matthiask/django-newsletter-subscription
'newsletter_subscription',
# added below 1 line for newsletter subscription https://github.com/matthiask/towel/
'towel',
# added below 1 line for pwa https://github.com/silviolleite/django-pwa
'pwa',
# added below 14 lines for Django CMS
'sekizai',
'easy_thumbnails',
'filer',
'mptt',
# added below 1 line for adding avatar https://github.com/grantmcconnaughey/django-avatar
'avatar',

[sasikumar1978k]

ERRORS:
<class 'filer.admin.fileadmin.FileAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by FileAdmin.autocomplete_fields.
<class 'filer.admin.folderadmin.FolderAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by FolderAdmin.autocomplete_fields.
<class 'filer.admin.imageadmin.ImageAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by ImageAdmin.autocomplete_fields.
<class 'filer.admin.permissionadmin.PermissionAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by PermissionAdmin.autocomplete_fields.

[fsbraun]

Yes, filer does define them:

• django-filer/filer/admin/fileadmin.py

  Line 61 in cce13d2

  search_fields = ['name', 'original_filename', 'sha1', 'description']

• django-filer/filer/admin/folderadmin.py

  Line 64 in cce13d2

  search_fields = ['name']

• ImageAdmin does inherit it from FileAdmin

• django-filer/filer/admin/permissionadmin.py

  Line 15 in cce13d2

  search_fields = ['user__username', 'group__name', 'folder__name']

Some other code in your projects might be tempering with this.

Have you tried to open a shell (./manage.py shell) and do this?

In[1]: from filer.adminfileadmin import FileAdmin
In[2]: FileAdmin.search_fields

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[rzwink]

In case any one else has this error. My project has a custom User Model. I fixed this by adding search_fields to my customer User model admin. Essentially, this is not a problem with this project, but a field missing from my user model admin.

[fsbraun]

@rzwink Thanks for the explanation!

[anjanpa]

Hi. I am facing the same issue. If I add search_fields=('foo',) , it resolves the issue but it is not a good solution. Is there any other solutions to solve the issue?

[fsbraun]

@anjanpa The only other solution I can think of is removing the auto complete if if user model's admin does not have search_fields defined.

Would you like to come up with a PR?

[anjanpa]

HI @fsbraun Thank you for acknowledging the problem. The problem occurred because I defined custom user model and didn't define search fields in the admin.py.

When I added search_fields in admin.py:

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import User
@admin.register(User)
class UserAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
search_fields = ["email"]

This solved my problem.

[jainj2305]

I'm also facing the same error.

> python manage.py makemigrations
SystemCheckError: System check identified some issues:

ERRORS:
<class 'filer.admin.fileadmin.FileAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by FileAdmin.autocomplete_fields.
<class 'filer.admin.folderadmin.FolderAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by FolderAdmin.autocomplete_fields.
<class 'filer.admin.imageadmin.ImageAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by ImageAdmin.autocomplete_fields.
<class 'filer.admin.permissionadmin.PermissionAdmin'>: (admin.E040) ModelAdmin must define "search_fields", because it's referenced by PermissionAdmin.autocomplete_fields.

I just added following in INSTALLED_APPS section

    # Third-party App
    'mptt',
    'easy_thumbnails',
    'filer',

> pip freeze
asgiref==3.8.1
chardet==5.2.0
cssselect2==0.7.0
Django==5.1.6
django-filer==3.3.1
django-js-asset==3.0.1
django-mptt==0.16.0
django-polymorphic==3.1.0
easy-thumbnails==2.10
lxml==5.3.1
pillow==11.1.0
reportlab==4.3.1
setuptools==75.8.0
sqlparse==0.5.3
svglib==1.5.1
tinycss2==1.4.0
webencodings==0.5.1

[anjanpa]

in your admin.py file did you create useradmin(admin.ModelAdmin)

Also did you add search fields like this
@admin.register(User)
class UserAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
search_fields = ["email"]

also, the user model I used is a custom model

[jainj2305]

Great, Thanks @anjanpa , Following fix, fixed this issue for me.

@admin.register(CustomUser)
class UserAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    search_fields = ["email"]

This means if there is custom user, then we need to define search_fields for custom user.

[anjanpa]

no when you are using filer , it uses auto complete fields. And for autocomplete fields, search fields are necessary in the corresponding model. That's why we need to use ModelAdmin and write search fields.

[rzwink]

What do you think about doing something like this in FileAdmin to handle User admins without search_fields defined? Or even futher simplify it with just an error that User model admin needs search_fields defined.

from django.contrib import admin
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
from .models import File

User = get_user_model()

class FileAdmin(PrimitivePermissionAwareModelAdmin):
    list_display = ('label',)
    list_per_page = 10
    search_fields = ['name', 'original_filename', 'sha1', 'description']
    readonly_fields = ('sha1', 'display_canonical')

    def __init__(self, model, admin_site):
        super().__init__(model, admin_site)
        
        # Check if the User model has search_fields defined in its admin
        user_admin = admin.site._registry.get(User)
        
        if user_admin and hasattr(user_admin, 'search_fields') and user_admin.search_fields:
            # If search_fields are defined, use autocomplete_fields for 'owner'
            self.autocomplete_fields = ['owner']
        else:
            # If not defined, set a sensible default for User model (e.g., username and email)
            if not user_admin:
                # Register a minimal admin for the User model with default search fields
                @admin.register(User)
                class DefaultUserAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
                    search_fields = ['username', 'email']
            elif hasattr(user_admin, 'search_fields'):
                # Set default search_fields if the User model admin is already registered
                user_admin.search_fields = ['username', 'email']
            
            self.autocomplete_fields = ['owner']

admin.site.register(File, FileAdmin)