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:

• https://github.com/django-cms/django-filer/blob/cce13d2ac69dd88b600a6b7c956789b53ebbf017/filer/admin/fileadmin.py#L61
• https://github.com/django-cms/django-filer/blob/cce13d2ac69dd88b600a6b7c956789b53ebbf017/filer/admin/folderadmin.py#L64
• ImageAdmin does inherit it from FileAdmin
• https://github.com/django-cms/django-filer/blob/cce13d2ac69dd88b600a6b7c956789b53ebbf017/filer/admin/permissionadmin.py#L15

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[bot]]

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)