admin.E108 is raised on fields accessible only via instance.

[ajcsimons]

As part of startup django validates the ModelAdmin's list_display list/tuple for correctness (django.admin.contrib.checks._check_list_display). Having upgraded django from 2.07 to 2.2.1 I found that a ModelAdmin with a list display that used to pass the checks and work fine in admin now fails validation, preventing django from starting. A PositionField from the django-positions library triggers this bug, explanation why follows.

from django.db import models
from position.Fields import PositionField

class Thing(models.Model)
  number = models.IntegerField(default=0)
  order = PositionField()

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Thing

@admin.register(Thing)
class ThingAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin)
  list_display = ['name', 'order']

Under 2.2.1 this raises an incorrect admin.E108 message saying "The value of list_display[1] refers to 'order' which is not a callable...".
Under 2.0.7 django starts up successfully.
If you change 'name' to 'no_name' or 'order' to 'no_order' then the validation correctly complains about those.

The reason for this bug is commit ​https://github.com/django/django/commit/47016adbf54b54143d4cf052eeb29fc72d27e6b1 which was proposed and accepted as a fix for bug https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/28490. The problem is while it fixed that bug it broke the functionality of _check_list_display_item in other cases. The rationale for that change was that after field=getattr(model, item) field could be None if item was a descriptor returning None, but subsequent code incorrectly interpreted field being None as meaning getattr raised an AttributeError. As this was done after trying field = model._meta.get_field(item) and that failing that meant the validation error should be returned. However, after the above change if hasattr(model, item) is false then we no longer even try field = model._meta.get_field(item) before returning an error. The reason hasattr(model, item) is false in the case of a PositionField is its get method throws an exception if called on an instance of the PositionField class on the Thing model class, rather than a Thing instance.

For clarity, here are the various logical tests that _check_list_display_item needs to deal with and the behaviour before the above change, after it, and the correct behaviour (which my suggested patch exhibits). Note this is assuming the first 2 tests callable(item) and hasattr(obj, item) are both false (corresponding to item is an actual function/lambda rather than string or an attribute of ThingAdmin).

• hasattr(model, item) returns True or False (which is the same as seeing if getattr(model, item) raises AttributeError)
• model._meta.get_field(item) returns a field or raises FieldDoesNotExist

Get a field from somewhere, could either be from getattr(model,item) if hasattr was True or from get_field.

• Is that field an instance of ManyToManyField?
• Is that field None? (True in case of bug 28490)

hasattr	get_field	field is None?	field ManyToMany?	2.0 returns	2.2 returns	Correct behaviour	Comments
True	ok	False	False	[]	[]	[]	-
True	ok	False	True	E109	E109	E109	-
True	ok	True	False	E108	[]	[]	good bit of 28490 fix, 2.0 was wrong
True	raises	False	False	[]	[]	[]	-
True	raises	False	True	E109	[]	E109	Another bug introduced by 28490 fix, fails to check if ManyToMany in get_field raise case
True	raises	True	False	E108	[]	[]	good bit of 28490 fix, 2.0 was wrong
False	ok	False	False	[]	E108	[]	bad bit of 28490 fix, bug hit with PositionField
False	ok	False	True	[]	E108	E109	both 2.0 and 2.2 wrong
False	ok	True	False	[]	E108	[]	bad 28490 fix
False	raises	False	False	E108	E108	E108	-
False	raises	False	True	E108	E108	E108	impossible condition, we got no field assigned to be a ManyToMany
False	raises	True	False	E108	E108	E108	impossible condition, we got no field assigned to be None

The following code exhibits the correct behaviour in all cases. The key changes are there is no longer a check for hasattr(model, item), as that being false should not prevent us form attempting to get the field via get_field, and only return an E108 in the case both of them fail. If either of those means or procuring it are successful then we need to check if it's a ManyToMany. Whether or not the field is None is irrelevant, and behaviour is contained within the exception catching blocks that should cause it instead of signalled through a variable being set to None which is a source of conflation of different cases.

def _check_list_display_item(self, obj, item, label):
    if callable(item):
        return []
    elif hasattr(obj, item):
        return []
    else:
        try:
            field = obj.model._meta.get_field(item)
        except FieldDoesNotExist:
            try:
                field = getattr(obj.model, item)
            except AttributeError:
                return [
                    checks.Error(
                        "The value of '%s' refers to '%s', which is not a callable, "
                        "an attribute of '%s', or an attribute or method on '%s.%s'." % (
                            label, item, obj.__class__.__name__,
                            obj.model._meta.app_label, obj.model._meta.object_name,
                        ),
                        obj=obj.__class__,
                        id='admin.E108',
                    )
                ]

        if isinstance(field, models.ManyToManyField):
            return [
                checks.Error(
                    "The value of '%s' must not be a ManyToManyField." % label,
                    obj=obj.__class__,
                    id='admin.E109',
                )
            ]
        return []

[Mariusz Felisiak]

Thanks for such detailed description! I've already created ticket for this issue. We can continue there (you should be able to modify description).

Duplicate of #30543.