GameTeX Django

A Django app for GameTeX integration. Writing a ten-day webapp? You'll want this.

Getting started

You'll need a version of GameTeX that supports JSON export (talk to Ken).

To install:

• pip install gametex-django
• Add gametex to your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py.
• Run ./manage.py syncdb to create the new models.

To import your game data:

• Generate json_PRINT.json by LaTeXing json_PRINT.tex in your game's Production directory.
• Run ./manage.py load_gametex /path/to/json-PRINT.json

You then have access to everything exported in your JSON file, all within Django.

If you pass the --clear argument to ./manage.py load_gametex, all existing GameTeX objects will be deleted from your database.

If you pass the --create-users argument, and all your PCs have 'username' and 'password' fields, the loader will automatically create users for each of your PCs and create GameTeXUser entries to map between them.

Django model mapping

Each GameTeX entity (sheet, ability, PC, etc.) becomes a GameTeXObject (GTO for short). Each GTO belongs to a number of classes, such as 'KeyCard', 'Item', or 'PC'; a 'PC' might also be a 'Char'. (There's no hierarchical representation in the GameTeX Django models; that's up to GameTeX.)

There's a shortcut method, 'bc', that allows you to filter GameTeXObjects by class.

Each GTO has a 'name', a 'number', and a 'macro'; 'name' and 'number' may be blank. You can query using any of these, and you can access them in the usual way:

>>> g = GTO.bc('PC')[0]
>>> g.name
u'Captain GameTeX'  
>>> g.macro
u'cTest'
>>> g.number
u'22234'

Note that all fields are Unicode text, even ostensibly numerical ones such as 'number'. It's up to you to convert those to int (or whatever) if necessary.

GTOs may also have custom fields defined, depending on how your game looks. For example, an item might have a 'price' field. You can access these like normal:

>>> g2 = GTO.bc('KeyCard')[0]
>>> g2.name
u'CompSci Data'
>>> g2.hintreq
u'Cryptography 2'
>>> g2.name = 'CS Data'
>>> g2.name
u'CS Data'

In case your field has spaces in it, you can reference it with the 'field' and 'set_field' methods of GameTeXObject:

>>> g.has_field('Combat Rating')
True
>>> g.field('Combat Rating')
u'2'
>>> g.set_field('Combat Rating', '4')
>>> g.field('Combat Rating')
u'4'

Updating in place

Running ./manage.py load_gametex ... again will update your objects in-place. If a macro exists, any field changes you've made in the database will be overridden, but new objects will be created and new fields populated as normal. For example, if you had a character (pseudo-JSON):

{"macro": "cTest",
 "name": "Captain GameTeX",
 "number": "1",
 "Combat Rating": "2"
}

and you updated from a JSON file that looked like this:

{"macro": "cTest",
"name": "Captain Achmed von GameTeX",
"number": "100",
"income": "5"
}

you'd get:

{"macro": "cTest",
"name": "Captain Achmed von GameTeX",
"number": "100",
"income": "5",
"Combat Rating": "2"
}

You may override this behavior by passing --preserve to ./manage.py load_gametex. This would result in:

{"macro": "cTest",
"name": "Captain GameTeX",
"number": "1",
"Combat Rating": "2"
"income": "5",
}