django-fluent-contents 0.8.5

Configuration

Next, create a project which uses the module:

cd ..
django-admin.py startproject fluentdemo

It should have the following settings:

INSTALLED_APPS += (
    'fluent_contents',

    # And optionally all plugins desired:
    'fluent_contents.plugins.code',
    'fluent_contents.plugins.commentsarea',
    'fluent_contents.plugins.disquswidgets',
    'fluent_contents.plugins.formdesignerlink',
    'fluent_contents.plugins.gist',
    'fluent_contents.plugins.googledocsviewer',
    'fluent_contents.plugins.iframe',
    'fluent_contents.plugins.markup',
    'fluent_contents.plugins.rawhtml',
    'fluent_contents.plugins.text',

    # Some plugins need extra Django applications
    'disqus',
    'django.contrib.comments',
    'django_wysiwyg',
    'form_designer',
)

The database tables can be created afterwards:

./manage.py syncdb

Finally, it needs a model or application that displays the content. There are two ways to include content. The most simply way, is adding a PlaceholderField to a model:

# models.py:

class Article(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField("Title", max_length=200)
    slug = models.SlugField("Slug", unique=True)
    content = PlaceholderField("article_content")

    class Meta:
        verbose_name = "Article"
        verbose_name_plural = "Articles"

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.title


# admin.py:

class ArticleAdmin(PlaceholderFieldAdmin):
    pass

admin.site.register(Article, ArticleAdmin)

The most advanced combination, is using the PlaceholderEditorAdmin or PlaceholderEditorAdminMixin classes. These classes are designed for CMS-style applications which multiple placeholders on a page. See the provided example application for details.

NOTE:

The django-fluent-pages application is built on top of this API, and provides a ready-to-use CMS that can be implemented with minimal configuration effort. To build a custom CMS, the API documentation of the fluent_contents.admin module provides more details of the classes.

Details about the various settings are explained in the documentation.

Creating custom content items

To implement custom elements of a design - while making them editable for admins - this module allows you to create custom content items. Take a look in the existing types at fluent_contents.plugins to see how it’s being done.

It boils down to creating a package with 2 files:

The models.py file should define the fields of the content item:

from django.db import models
from fluent_contents.models import ContentItem

class AnnouncementBlockItem(ContentItem):
    title = models.CharField("Title", max_length=200)
    body = models.TextField("Body")
    button_text = models.CharField("Text", max_length=200)
    button_link = models.URLField("URL")

    class Meta:
        verbose_name = "Announcement block"
        verbose_name_plural = "Announcement blocks"

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.title

The content_plugins.py file defines the metadata and rendering:

from fluent_contents.extensions import plugin_pool, ContentPlugin
from .models import AnnouncementBlockItem

@plugin_pool.register
class AnnouncementBlockPlugin(ContentPlugin):
   model = AnnouncementBlockItem
   render_template = "plugins/announcementblock.html"
   category = "Simple blocks"

The plugin can also define the admin layout, by adding fields such as a fieldset, but that is all optional. The template could look like:

<div class="announcement">
    <h3>{{ instance.title }}</h3>
    <div class="text">
        {{ instance.body|linebreaks }}
    </div>
    <p class="button"><a href="{{ instance.button_url }}">{{ instance.button_text }}</a></p>
</div>

Et, voila: web editors are now able to place an announcement items at the page in a very structured manner! Other content items can be created in the same way, either in the same Django application, or in a separate application.

Contributing

This module is designed to be generic. In case there is anything you didn’t like about it, or think it’s not flexible enough, please let us know. We’d love to improve it!

If you have any other valuable contribution, suggestion or idea, please let us know as well because we will look into it. Pull requests are welcome too. :-)