django-json-widget

October 24, 2025 · View on GitHub

.. image:: https://badge.fury.io/py/django-json-widget.svg :target: https://badge.fury.io/py/django-json-widget

An alternative widget that makes it easy to edit the new Django's field JSONField (PostgreSQL specific model fields)

Quickstart

Install django-json-widget::

pip install django-json-widget

Add it to your INSTALLED_APPS:

.. code-block:: python

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'django_json_widget',
    ...
)

Add the widget in your admin.py:

.. code-block:: python

from django.contrib import admin
from django.db.models import JSONField
from django_json_widget.widgets import JSONEditorWidget
from .models import YourModel


@admin.register(YourModel)
class YourModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    formfield_overrides = {
        JSONField: {'widget': JSONEditorWidget},
    }

You can also add the widget in your forms.py:

.. code-block:: python

from django import forms
from django_json_widget.widgets import JSONEditorWidget
from .models import YourModel


class YourForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = YourModel

        fields = ('jsonfield',)

        widgets = {
            'jsonfield': JSONEditorWidget
        }

Configuration

You can customize the JSONEditorWidget with the following options:

width: Width of the editor as a string with CSS size units (px, em, % etc). Defaults to 90%.
height: Height of the editor as a string CSS size units. Defaults to 550px.
options: A dict of options accepted by the JSON editor_. Options that require functions (eg. onError) are not supported.
mode (deprecated): The default editor mode. This argument is redundant because it can be specified as a part of options. Preserved for backwards compatibility with version 0.2.0.
attrs: HTML attributes to be applied to the wrapper element. See the Django Widget documentation_.

Accessing JsonEditor Instance

The JsonEditor instance is automatically exposed for external access through two methods:

Window object: Available as window['FIELD_ID_editor'] where FIELD_ID is the field's HTML ID
DOM element: Available as container.jsonEditor property on the widget's container element

Example usage for external JavaScript access:

.. code-block:: javascript

// Access via window object
var editor = window['id_jsonfield_editor'];
editor.set({'key': 'new value'});

// Access via DOM element
var container = document.getElementById('id_jsonfield');
var editor = container.jsonEditor;
editor.set({'key': 'new value'});

This allows you to programmatically call JsonEditor methods like set(), get(), update(), etc. from custom JavaScript code running in your admin pages or forms.

.. _json editor: https://github.com/josdejong/jsoneditor/blob/master/docs/api.md#configuration-options .. _Django Widget documentation: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.1/ref/forms/widgets/#django.forms.Widget.attrs

Before:

.. image:: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jmrivas86/django-json-widget/master/imgs/jsonfield_0.png

After:

.. image:: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jmrivas86/django-json-widget/master/imgs/jsonfield_1.png