Autocompletion for django-taggit’s TaggableManager

Model example

Consider such a model, using django-taggit to handle tags for a model:

from django.db import models

from taggit.managers import TaggableManager


class TestModel(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    tags = TaggableManager()

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

View example

The QuerySet view works here too: we’re relying on Select2 and a QuerySet of Tag objects:

from dal import autocomplete

from taggit.models import Tag


class TagAutocomplete(autocomplete.Select2QuerySetView):
    def get_queryset(self):
        # Don't forget to filter out results depending on the visitor !
        if not self.request.user.is_authenticated():
            return Tag.objects.none()

        qs = Tag.objects.all()

        if self.q:
            qs = qs.filter(name__istartswith=self.q)

        return qs

Don’t forget to Register the autocomplete view.

Note

For more complex filtering, refer to official documentation for the QuerySet API.

Form example

As usual, we need a backend-aware widget that will make only selected choices to render initially, to avoid butchering the database. As we’re using a QuerySet of Tag and Select2 in its “tag” appearance, we’ll use TagSelect2.

Also, we need a field that works with a queryset of Tag and use the TaggableManager: TaggitField.

Finnaly, we can’t use Django’s ModelForm because it django-taggit’s field is made to be edited in a text input with a comma-separated list of fields, which isn’t what Select2 supports even in its tag mode. So, we’ll use FutureModelForm.

Example:

class TestForm(autocomplete.FutureModelForm):
    tags = autocomplete.TaggitField(
        required=False,
        widget=autocomplete.TagSelect2(url='your-tag-autocomplete-url'),
    )

    class Meta:
        model = TestModel
        fields = ('name',)