Django "xxxxxx Object" display customization in admin action sidebar

I would like to change the default behavior of how the admin recent changes sidebar displays the name of "objects" added. Refer to the picture below:

I would like to change how these are named in the Admin. Ideally, I would like to be able to change it from "MyModelName object" to, as in the "Policy" object example, something like "Policy: {{ value of the policy's "Policy Name" field. }}.

I was thinking that __unicode__ for my Patient model handled this, but it doesn't appear to. Any assistance is appreciated.

Solution 1:

__unicode__ does do that. Your model should look something like this:

class SomeModel(models.Model):
    def __unicode__(self):
       return 'Policy: ' + self.name

On Python 3 you need to use __str__:

def __str__(self):
   return 'Policy: ' + self.name

Solution 2:

Using the __str__ method works on Python3 and Django1.8:

class MyModel(models.Model):

    name = models.CharField(max_length=60)

    def __str__(self):
        return 'MyModel: {}'.format(self.name)

Solution 3:

The string you're seeing is coming from __unicode__ method, as others have mentioned. But the thing is that admin saves string representation of an object when it creates log event, therefore if you add __unicode__ implementation after the log entry was saved, you won't see new titles on old items, only after you make some new activity