ModelAdmin.lookup_allowed() incorrectly raises DisallowedModelAdminLookup lookup with reverse relation to origin model

[Michal Dabski]

Consider the following models:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

class AuditSession(models.Model):
    auditor = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)

class Institution(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

class Auditor(models.Model):
    user = models.OneToOneField(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    institution = models.ForeignKey(Institution, on_delete=models.CASCADE, null=True, blank=True)

And the following filter in audit session admin:

from django.contrib import admin

from .models import AuditSession, Institution, Auditor

@admin.register(AuditSession)
class AuditSessionAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_filter = (
        ('auditor__auditor__institution'),
    )

admin.site.register((Institution, Auditor))

As of Django version 1.9 up to the latest release 1.11.1, the above lookup will raise server error when used by raising DisallowedModelAdminLookup (Filtering by auditor__auditor__institution__id__exact not allowed). This is because the lookup uses reverse relation between User and Auditor model.

This lookup passes checks and only crashes when user tries to use the filter. I could not find the reasoning behind the implementation of lookup_allowed and why it would forbid using reverse relations. Nor could I find any documentation for this change in 1.9 release notes.
I have recently upgraded from django 1.8 where this lookup worked perfectly fine.

[Tim Graham]

I can reproduce the issue with some caveats. I used models.Model instead of BaseModel as you didn't provide a definition for that. I'm not sure if that difference matters.

I bisected the behavior change to c2e70f02653519db3a49cd48f5158ccad7434d25 which is odd because that commit shouldn't change behavior. However, before that commit (on 1.8), I get the error (admin.E116) The value of 'list_filter[0]' refers to 'auditor__auditor__institution', which does not refer to a Field. Afterward that commit, I see the DisallowedModelAdminLookup exception in this ticket's description.

[Tim Graham]

Correction: 8f30556329b64005d63b66859a74752a0b261315 is the commit where the regression appeared. I'm updating the description with a copy/paste version of the models/admin that I used.