Django admin search: how to override the default handler?

It is very easy to do this in django 1.6

ModelAdmin.get_search_results(request, queryset, search_term) New in Django 1.6.

import operator# from django.utils.six.moves import reduce  # if Python 3from django.db.models import Qclass PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):    list_display = ('name', 'age')    search_fields = ('name',)    def get_search_results(self, request, queryset, search_term):        # search_term is what you input in admin site        # queryset is search results        queryset, use_distinct = super(PersonAdmin, self).get_search_results(request, queryset, search_term)        search_term_list = search_term.split(' ')#['apple','bar']        # you can also use `self.search_fields` instead of following `search_columns`        search_columns = ('name','age','address')        #convert to Q(name='apple') | Q(name='bar') | Q(age='apple') | ...        query_condition = reduce(operator.or_, [Q(**{c:v}) for c in search_columns for v in search_term_list])        queryset = self.model.objects.filter(query_condition)        # NOTICE, if you want to use the query before        # queryset = queryset.filter(query_condition)        return queryset, use_distinct

So I have been using the code from WeizhongTu's answer and found a not-so-obvious error in it. When we try to use both filtering and searching with this code, filtering is shadowed by this line:

queryset = self.model.objects.filter(eval(query_condition))

It is important to use the previous results ONLY. So you must never use self.model.objects to obtain the queryset, but only filter the queryset itself. Like this:

def get_search_results(self, request, queryset, search_term):    # search_term is what you input in admin site    # queryset is the list of objects passed to you    # by the previous functions, e. g. filtering     search_term_list = search_term.split(' ') #['apple','bar']    search_columns = ('name','age','address')    # convert to Q(name='apple') | Q(name='bar') | Q(age='apple') | ...    query_condition = ' | '.join(['Q(%s="%s")'%(x,y) for x in search_term_list for y in search_columns])    appended_queryset = queryset.filter(eval(query_condition))    # queryset is search results    queryset, use_distinct = super(PersonAdmin, self).get_search_results(request, queryset, search_term)    queryset |= appended_queryset    return queryset, use_distinct

you can add an ModelAdmin method:

def queryset(self, request):    qs = super(MyModelAdmin, self).queryset(request)    # modify queryset here, eg. only user-assigned tasks    qs.filter(assigned__exact=request.user)    return qs

you have a request here, so most of the stuff can be view dependent, including url parameters, cookies, sessions etc.