django-common-helpers

Overview

Django-common consists of the following things:

• A middleware that makes sure your web-app runs either on or without 'www' in the domain.
• A SessionManagerBase base class, that helps in keeping your session related code object-oriented and clean! See session.py for usage details.
• An EmailBackend for authenticating users based on their email, apart from username.
• Some custom db fields that you can use in your models including a UniqueHashField and RandomHashField.
• Bunch of helpful functions in helper.py
• A render_form_field template tag that makes rendering form fields easy and DRY.
• A couple of dry response classes: JsonResponse and XMLResponse in the django_common.http that can be used in views that give json/xml responses.

Installation

• Install django_common (ideally in your virtualenv!) using pip or simply getting a copy of the code and putting it in a directory in your codebase.

• Add django_common to your Django settings INSTALLED_APPS:

      INSTALLED_APPS = [
      # ...
      "django_common",
  ]
  

• Add the following to your settings.py with appropriate values:

  • IS_DEV
  • IS_PROD
  • DOMAIN_NAME
  • WWW_ROOT

• Add common_settings to your Django settings TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS:

  TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = [
          # ...
          'django_common.context_processors.common_settings',
  ]
  

• Add EmailBackend to the Django settings AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS:

  AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
          'django_common.auth_backends.EmailBackend',
          'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend'
  )
  

• Add WWWRedirectMiddleware if required to the list of middlewares:

  MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = [
          # ...
          "WWWRedirectMiddleware",
  ]
  

• Scaffolds / ajax_form.js (ajax forms) etc. require jQuery

Scaffolding feature

1. Installing

To get scaffold just download scaffold branch of django-common, add it to INSTALLED_APPS and set up SCAFFOLD_APPS_DIR in settings.

Default is set to main app directory. However if you use django_base_project you must set up this to SCAFFOLD_APPS_DIR = 'apps/'.

2. Run

To run scaffold type:

python manage.py scaffold APPNAME --model MODELNAME [fields]

APPNAME is app name. If app does not exists it will be created. MODELNAME is model name. Just enter model name that you want to create (for example: Blog, Topic, Post etc). It must be alphanumerical. Only one model per run is allowed!

[fields] - list of the model fields.

3. Field types

Available fields:

char - CharField
text - TextField
int - IntegerFIeld
decimal -DecimalField
datetime - DateTimeField
foreign - ForeignKey

All fields requires name that is provided after : sign, for example:

char:title  text:body int:posts datetime:create_date

Two fields foreign and decimal requires additional parameters:

• "foreign" as third argument takes foreignkey model, example:

  foreign:blog:Blog, foreign:post:Post, foreign:added_by:User
  

NOTICE: All foreign key models must alread exist in project. User and Group model are imported automatically.

• decimal field requires two more arguments max_digits and decimal_places, example:

  decimal:total_cost:10:2
  

NOTICE: To all models scaffold automatically adds two fields: update_date and create_date.

4. How it works?

Scaffold creates models, views (CRUD), forms, templates, admin, urls and basic tests (CRUD). Scaffold templates are using two blocks extending from base.html:

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block page-title %} {% endblock %}
{% block conent %} {% endblock %}

So be sure you have your base.html set up properly.

Scaffolding example usage

Let's create very simple forum app. We need Forum, Topic and Post model.

• Forum model

Forum model needs just one field name:

python manage.py scaffold forum --model Forum char:name

• Topic model

Topics are created by site users so we need: created_by, title and Forum foreign key (update_date and create_date are always added to models):

python manage.py scaffold forum --model Topic foreign:created_by:User char:title foreign:forum:Forum

• Post model

Last one are Posts. Posts are related to Topics. Here we need: title, body, created_by and foreign key to Topic:

python manage.py scaffold forum --model Post char:title text:body foreign:created_by:User foreign:topic:Topic

All data should be in place!

Now you must add forum app to INSTALLED_APPS and include app in urls.py file by adding into urlpatterns:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ...
    (r'^', include('forum.urls')),
)

Now syncdb new app and you are ready to go:

python manage.py syncdb

Run your server:

python manage.py runserver

And go to forum main page:

http://localhost:8000/forum/

All structure are in place. Now you can personalize models, templates and urls.

At the end you can test new app by runing test:

python manage.py test forum

Creating test database for alias 'default'...
.......
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 7 tests in 0.884s

OK

Happy scaffolding!

This open-source app is brought to you by Tivix, Inc. ( http://tivix.com/ )

Changelog

0.6.3

• Changed mimetype to content_type in class JsonReponse to reflect Django 1.7 deprecation.

0.6.2

• Django 1.7 compatability using simplejson as fallback

0.6.1

• Added support for attaching content to emails manually (without providing path to file).
• Added LoginRequiredMixin

0.6

• Added support for Django 1.5
• Added fixes in nested inlines
• Added support for a multi-select checkbox field template and radio button in render_form_field
• Added Test Email Backend for overwrite TO, CC and BCC fields in all outgoing emails
• Added Custom File Email Backend to save emails as file with custom extension
• Rewrote fragments to be Bootstrap-compatible

0.5.1

• root_path deprecated in Django 1.4+

0.5

• Added self.get_inline_instances() usages instead of self.inline_instances
• Changed minimum requirement to Django 1.4+ because of the above.

0.4

• Added nested inline templates, js and full ajax support. Now we can add/remove nested fields dynamically.
• JsonpResponse object for padded JSON
• User time tracking feature - how long the user has been on site, associated middleware etc.
• @anonymous_required decorator: for views that should not be accessed by a logged-in user.
• Added EncryptedTextField and EncryptedCharField
• Misc. bug fixes