Django Control Room

A framework for building Django admin tools, with a centralized dashboard to manage them

Django Control Room is a plugin framework for building Django admin tools (called "panels"), it's also a suite of official panels for managing all sorts of services like Redis, Celery, Caches and inspecting Django internals like URLs and Signals. Every panel - official or third-party - is a small, independent Python package built on the same public plugin API/SDK available in dj-control-room-base.

Install dj-control-room and it discovers every compatible panel via Python entry points, renders it in a centralized dashboard, and gives it a shared design system, permissions model, and admin sidebar integration - all for free.

The Official Panels below are reference implementations of that same framework - a starting point, not the whole story. See Creating Custom Panels to build your own.

Features

• Plugin Framework - Build your own admin tools with the core libs in dj-control-room-base; your panels behave exactly like the official ones
• Centralized Dashboard - Every installed panel, official or custom, is discovered automatically and displayed in one place
• Beautiful UI - Modern, responsive design with dark mode support, shared across every panel via a common design system
• Secure - Package verification prevents panel hijacking
• Easy Integration - Works seamlessly with Django admin
• Official Panels - Pre-built panels for common tasks, built on the same framework available to you
• django-unfold theme adapter - opt-in stylesheet that remaps colors to match django-unfold's accent/neutral palette (see Theme adapters)

django-unfold Theme

When running under django-unfold, enable the bundled unfold.css theme adapter via EXTRA_CSS to match the dashboard's colors to the host site's accent and neutral palette. This is opt-in - it is not applied automatically just because django-unfold is installed.

DJ_CONTROL_ROOM_SETTINGS = {
    'EXTRA_CSS': ['dj_control_room_base/css/themes/unfold.css'],
}

Installation

Basic Installation

pip install dj-control-room

Install with Official Panels

# Install with specific panels
pip install dj-control-room[redis,cache,urls]

# Or install with all official panels
pip install dj-control-room[all]

Available panel extras: - redis - Redis connection manager and inspector - cache - Django cache backend inspector - urls - URL pattern browser and tester - celery - Celery task monitor - signals - Django signals/recievers inspection - all - All official panels

Quick Start

1. Add to INSTALLED_APPS

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

    # Required: shared core library (template tags + design system)
    'dj_control_room_base',

    # Add any panels you installed
    'dj_redis_panel',
    'dj_cache_panel',
    'dj_urls_panel',

    # Then add Django Control Room
    'dj_control_room',
    # Your apps
    # ...
]

2. Configure URLs

# urls.py
from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    # Panel URLs (include each panel you installed)
    path('admin/dj-redis-panel/', include('dj_redis_panel.urls')),
    path('admin/dj-cache-panel/', include('dj_cache_panel.urls')),
    path('admin/dj-urls-panel/', include('dj_urls_panel.urls')),

    # Control Room dashboard
    path('admin/dj-control-room/', include('dj_control_room.urls')),

    # Django admin
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

3. Access the Control Room

1. Run migrations: python manage.py migrate
2. Start your server: python manage.py runserver
3. Navigate to http://localhost:8000/admin/dj-control-room/

Admin Sidebar Integration

All installed panels appear in the Django admin sidebar under "Django Control Room":

Control Sidebar Behavior (Optional)

# settings.py
DJ_CONTROL_ROOM_SETTINGS = {
    # Global: Show panels in both Control Room and their own sections
    'REGISTER_PANELS_IN_ADMIN': False,  # Default: False

    # Per-panel: Override for specific panels
    'PANEL_ADMIN_REGISTRATION': {
        'dj_redis_panel': True,   # Redis in both places
        'dj_cache_panel': False,  # Cache only in Control Room
    },

    # CSS: load built-in styles and/or inject your own
    'LOAD_DEFAULT_CSS': True,
    # Static paths are relative to app's static/ dir (e.g. 'myapp/css/overrides.css'
    # for a file at myapp/static/myapp/css/overrides.css). Full URLs also accepted.
    'EXTRA_CSS': [],
}

Official Panels

These are reference panels built using the same plugin framework described above - a great way to see it in action, and a starting point if you want to build your own.

Available Now

Coming Soon

Creating Custom Panels

The fastest way to create a new panel is using our official cookiecutter template:

pip install cookiecutter
cookiecutter https://github.com/yassi/cookiecutter-dj-control-room-plugin

This generates a complete panel structure with Django admin integration, tests, documentation, and Docker setup.

Manual Panel Creation

Prefer full control over the generated structure? You can build a panel by hand instead of using the cookiecutter template. See our Creating Panels Doc for the complete guide, or use our Build your own panel guide, which still uses the cookiecutter template to get started quickly.

Security

Django Control Room includes built-in security features:

• Package Verification - Featured panels are verified by package origin
• Staff-Only Access - Requires Django staff/superuser permissions
• No Malicious Hijacking - Prevents panels from impersonating official packages

Documentation

Visit the official site at djangocontrolroom.com for guides, tutorials, and examples.

Full documentation: https://yassi.github.io/dj-control-room/

• Installation Guide
• Configuration
• Creating Panels
• API Reference

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• Django 4.2+

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for details.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Credits

Created by Yasser Toruno

Official Site • Star us on GitHub • Report Bug • Request Feature