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Emma Delescolle

Emma Delescolle

Long-time pythonista, PSF & DSF member, Django fan, electronics enthusiast, author of django-admin-deux and other OSS libraries I am from Belgium and have been involved in open-source at different levels for about 20 years. I am a member of the Django Steering Council for the 6.x cycle. One of the things I enjoy the most is sharing knowledge with others. And this is why I enjoy writing tutorials as well as giving talks and workshops.

Is it time for a Django Admin rewrite? If so, how?

Talk
What if customizing Django's admin felt like writing any other Django view? Not just a cosmetic refresh, but a radically new approach relying on Django itself, factory-generated views and with a plugin-first design. Talk Structure:
  1. The Problem Space (5 min)
    • Django admin's 20-year legacy: what it got right and where it shows its age
    • The extension dilemma: 3rd-party ecosystem and collisions between extensions
    • Developer experience gap: different patterns for regular Django vs. admin
    • Community feedback: recurring requests that would be hard to implement
  2. Architectural Foundations (7 min)
    • View Factories: How views get generated dynamically
    • Action System: Actions are the recipes followed by view factories
    • Plugin Hooks: djp/pluggy integration and hook patterns
    • Out-of-the-box enhancements
  3. Examples & Demo (8 min)
    • Starting with familiar API: @register(Product) and list_display
    • Customizing list_display
    • Customizing layout
    • Creating your own plugins
    • Testing tools: BaseCRUDTestCase
    • Demo (pre-recorded)
  4. Migration & Adoption (4 min)
    • Running side-by-side with existing admin
    • Early adopters (well-know projects that already have plugins)
    • Extension compatibility matrix: no-effort, medium-effort, hard cases
  5. The Path Forward (2 min)
    • What's next: roadmap and timeline
    • Other potential benefits mid-term
    • Call to action