Django Admin- disable Editing and remove "Save" buttons for a specific model

I had same problem. I fixed it in admin.py

from django.contrib.admin.templatetags.admin_modify import register, submit_row as original_submit_row

@register.inclusion_tag('admin/submit_line.html', takes_context=True)
def submit_row(context):
''' submit buttons context change '''
ctx = original_submit_row(context)
ctx.update({
    'show_save_and_add_another': context.get('show_save_and_add_another',
                                             ctx['show_save_and_add_another']),
    'show_save_and_continue': context.get('show_save_and_continue',
                                          ctx['show_save_and_continue']),
    'show_save': context.get('show_save',
                             ctx['show_save']),
    'show_delete_link': context.get('show_delete_link', ctx['show_delete_link'])
})
return ctx

In MyModelAdmin class, add following function

@classmethod
def has_add_permission(cls, request):
    ''' remove add and save and add another button '''
    return False

def change_view(self, request, object_id, extra_context=None):
    ''' customize add/edit form '''
    extra_context = extra_context or {}
    extra_context['show_save_and_continue'] = False
    extra_context['show_save'] = False
    return super(MyModelAdmin, self).change_view(request, object_id, extra_context=extra_context)

The easiest method would be disabling respective permissions in ModelAdmin class. For example, I have a Cart model that I want an admin to only view (list and details) and all I did was to add the following functions to CartAdmin class to disable delete, change and add

class CartAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ['listing']

    def has_add_permission(self, request, obj=None):
        return False

    def has_change_permission(self, request, obj=None):
        return False

    def has_delete_permission(self, request, obj=None):
        return False

The three methods has_add_permission, has_change_permission and has_delete_permission are the ones that disable add button, add form, edit form and delete buttons in the admin

Here is a sample output when viewing a record details in the admin that has the above permissions disabled

As you can see the diagram above, you only have close button and the details are not displayed in a form

Override the templates/admin/submit_line.html template and make the buttons whatever you want. You can do this for only the specific model by putting it in templates/admin/[app_label]/[model]/submit_line.html.

To conditionally show the default submit line or your custom submit line, override ModelAdmin.change_view, and add a boolean to extra_context:

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    ...
    def change_view(self, request, object_id, extra_context=None):
        if not request.user.is_superuser:
            extra_context = extra_context or {}
            extra_context['readonly'] = True

        return super(MyModelAdmin, self).change_view(request, object_id, extra_context=extra_context)

For Django 1.11:

def has_add_permission(self, request, obj=None):
    return False

def changeform_view(self, request, object_id=None, form_url='', extra_context=None):
    extra_context = extra_context or {}
    extra_context['show_save_and_continue'] = False
    extra_context['show_save'] = False
    return super(YourModelAdmin, self).changeform_view(request, object_id, extra_context=extra_context)