Django Composer
Build Pages by composing listings and individual content
Contents
Quick start
django-composer-prk
is intended to be a standalone library, not a project, but it can indeed be run with:
- virtualenv ve - ./ve/bin/pip install -r composer/tests/requirements/19.txt - ./ve/bin/python manage.py migrate --run-syncdb --settings=composer.tests.settings.19 - ./ve/bin/python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 --settings=composer.tests.settings.19
Installation
- Install the contents of
composer/tests/requirements/19.txt
to your Python environment. - Add
composer
to theINSTALLED_APPS
setting. - Add
composer.middleware.ComposerFallbackMiddleware
to the middleware setting. This will REPLACE the flatpages 404 middleware, so remove that if needed. - Add
composer.context_processors.slots
to the context processors setting. - Add the following to your urls.py
url(r"^nested_admin/", include("nested_admin.urls"))
Content types
Slot:
- url: The URL or URL pattern where the slot should appear. This may be a regular expression.
- slot_name: In your project, the slot names are defined in
templates/base.html
. This field provides options that are automatically generated from the composer slots found in that base template.
Row:
- Each row is nested within a slot (ordered).
- The row can have extra CSS classes.
Column:
- Each column is nested within a row (ordered).
- width: A row is 12 columns wide, so columns can be fitted next to each other.
- title: rendered at the top of a column. Can be blank.
- class_name: Extra CSS classes that can be added to the column wrapping div.
Tile:
- Each tile is nested within a column (ordered).
- The tile target is a generic foreign key, so it can reference any content type.
- The view name can be any Django named view.
- Markdown is ad-hoc content. The admin UI for markdown is currently not optimal and requires a visit to the
Tiles
list. - style: The style is used to look up a suitable template for rendering the target. An example is
templates/myapp/inclusion_tags/mymodel_tile.html
. - class_name: The extra CSS classes to add to the tile.
Usage
The base template usually defines some composer slots. Typically this would be
a header slot, content slot and footer slot. This can be extended easily by
adding slots to the templates/base.html
template. Example of adding a
sidebar slot:
{% if composer_slots %}{% load composer_tags %}{% endif %} {% if composer_slots.sidebar %} <div id="sidebar"> {% composer sidebar %} </div> {% endif %}
On any URL on the site, if an appropriate slot exists that matches the URL and slot name, that slot will be rendered on the page. The current matching logic works as follows:
- Find the slot with the best possible match for the current URL. Slot URL's are treated as regular expressions so one slot can match many URL's.
The content slot is special:
- If the template being rendered fills the content block then it trumps any slot that may try to fill the content block.
Settings
You need to define the types of tiles available to the system in settings. The
tile
style is added implicitly. See the tile rendering section on how to
create the corresponding templates:
COMPOSER = {"styles": (("block", "Block"), ("tiny": "Tiny"))}
If you would like the styles to be inferred from all the installed apps add:
COMPOSER = {"load-existing-styles": {"greedy": True}}
It will attempt to add all styles that are already tied to apps and models that follow the correct naming convention.
Can be used in tandem with the styles
setting.
Alternatively entire apps and specific app models can be excluded or included.
Including:
COMPOSER = {"load-existing-styles": {"includes": {"<app_label>": ["<modelname>",]}}} COMPOSER = {"load-existing-styles": {"includes": {"<app_label>": "__all__"}}}
Excluding:
COMPOSER = {"load-existing-styles": {"excludes": {"<app_label>": ["<modelname>",]}}} COMPOSER = {"load-existing-styles": {"excludes": {"<app_label>": "__all__"}}}
Ad-hoc pages
django-composer-prk
offers functionality similar to Django Flatpages. If any request leads to a Page Not Found error then
the middleware attempts to render up a with name content
and a matching URL. This is particularly useful for creating
so-called campaign pages.
Tile rendering
Composer tries to render in order: view name, target, markdown.
View name
Renders the view and attempts to extract anything in <div id="content">
. The
result is then printed by templates/composer/tile.html
. Variables tile
and content
are available in the template context.
Target
Traverses upwards through an inheritance hierarchy until the best matched
template is found. Variables tile
, object
(the target) and content
are available in the template context.
Naming convention:
templates/{{ app_label }}/inclusion_tags/{{ model_name }}_{{ tile_style }}.html
templates/{{ app_label }}/inclusion_tags/{{ tile_style }}.html
If no template is found then renders the view returned by
target.get_absolute_url()
if it exists. It attempts to extract anything in
<div id="content">
. The result is then printed by
templates/composer/tile.html
. Variables tile
and content
are
available in the template context.
Markdown
The markdown is converted to HTML and then printed by
templates/composer/tile.html
. Variables tile
and content
are
available in the template context.