I have tried your code example but the autocomplete does not work.

from search_admin_autocomplete.admin import SearchAutoCompleteAdmin

class ImportBuildingUnitAdmin(SearchAutoCompleteAdmin, ImportExportModelAdmin):
    list_display = ( 'bu__short_name',)
    search_fields = ['bu__short_name', ]

I have included search_admin_autocomplete change list template also.

Please rectify the issue. Thank you.

Django 2.2.4
Python 3.7

This is how the search box looks when seen on desktop with screen <1024 px:

And this is how it looks on mobile:

Needs to be fixed upon.

it doesn't work with the multiple search fields?
if multiple fileds, it could't autocomplete.

In many cases, the requests going to the server becomes very high. Using client-side JavaScript for web pages, we can reduce these requests bearing the risk for outdated data. Perhaps can make a switch to decide between client-side searches vs server-side searches.

Just a small suggestion.

Maybe you could refactor your admin class to be used as a Mixin rather than as BaseClass.
Like DjangoQl does.
So instead of writing

class MyModelAdmin(SearchAutoCompleteAdmin)
    search_fields = ['search_field', ]

you'd write

class MyModelAdmin(SearchAutoCompleteMixin, admin.ModelAdmin)
    search_fields = ['search_field', ]

That way your functionality could probably also be used when using other admin extensions (e.g. [django-nested-admin])(https://pypi.org/project/django-nested-admin/).

I know, multiple inheritance is a controversial topic. But in Django its used all the time (see class based views) so why not use it here?

Correct me, if I'm wrong, but I think the only thing needed for this would be to simply drop the inheritance from this line
from class SearchAutoCompleteAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin): to class SearchAutoCompleteAdmin:.
And maybe a custom error message on this classes __init__ if it gets used without importing admin.

Tell me, what you think :)

There is a typo in PyPi package name: django-search-admin-autcomplete
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-search-admin-autcomplete/0.1

From django 4.x - url in django .confs is no longer available.

Fix:

1. replace import by

   from django.urls import include, re_path

2. replace url() on line 34 with

   re_path( ....