Installation¶

Install django-select2

python3 -m pip install django-select2

Add django_select2 to your INSTALLED_APPS in your project settings.

Add django_select to your URL root configuration:

from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    # … other patterns
    path("select2/", include("django_select2.urls")),
    # … other patterns
]

Finally make sure you have a persistent cache backend setup (NOT DummyCache or LocMemCache), we will use Redis in this example. Make sure you have a Redis server up and running:

# Debian
sudo apt-get install redis-server

# macOS
brew install redis

# install Redis python client
python3 -m pip install django-redis

Next, add the cache configuration to your settings.py as follows:

CACHES = {
    # … default cache config and others
    "select2": {
        "BACKEND": "django_redis.cache.RedisCache",
        "LOCATION": "redis://127.0.0.1:6379/2",
        "OPTIONS": {
            "CLIENT_CLASS": "django_redis.client.DefaultClient",
        }
    }
}

# Tell select2 which cache configuration to use:
SELECT2_CACHE_BACKEND = "select2"

External Dependencies¶

jQuery is not included in the package since it is expected that in most scenarios this would already be available.

Quick Start¶

Here is a quick example to get you started:

First make sure you followed the installation instructions above. Once everything is setup, let’s start with a simple example.

We have the following model:

# models.py
from django.conf import settings
from django.db import models


class Book(models.Model):
    author = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    co_authors = models.ManyToManyField(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, related_name='co_authored_by')

Next, we create a model form with custom Select2 widgets.

# forms.py
from django import forms
from django_select2 import forms as s2forms

from . import models


class AuthorWidget(s2forms.ModelSelect2Widget):
    search_fields = [
        "username__icontains",
        "email__icontains",
    ]


class CoAuthorsWidget(s2forms.ModelSelect2MultipleWidget):
    search_fields = [
        "username__icontains",
        "email__icontains",
    ]


class BookForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = models.Book
        fields = "__all__"
        widgets = {
            "author": AuthorWidget,
            "co_authors": CoAuthorsWidget,
        }

A simple class based view will do, to render your form:

# views.py
from django.views import generic

from . import forms, models


class BookCreateView(generic.CreateView):
    model = models.Book
    form_class = forms.BookForm
    success_url = "/"

Make sure to add the view to your urls.py:

# urls.py
from django.urls import include, path

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    # … other patterns
    path("select2/", include("django_select2.urls")),
    # … other patterns
    path("book/create", views.BookCreateView.as_view(), name="book-create"),
]

Finally, we need a little template, myapp/templates/myapp/book_form.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <title>Create Book</title>
    {{ form.media.css }}
    <style>
        input, select {width: 100%}
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Create a new Book</h1>
    <form method="POST">
        {% csrf_token %}
        {{ form.as_p }}
        <input type="submit">
    </form>
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
    {{ form.media.js }}
</body>
</html>

Done - enjoy the wonders of Select2!

Changelog¶

See Github releases.

All Contents¶

Contents:

Indices and tables¶

API Documentation

Select2 widget for Django 7.4.2

Contents