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

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/'.

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.

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.

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!

Generation of SECRET_KEY

Sometimes you need to generate a new SECRET_KEY so now you can generate it using this command:

$ python manage.py generate_secret_key

Sample output:

$ python manage.py generate_secret_key

SECRET_KEY: 7,=_3t?n@'wV=p`ITIA6"CUgJReZf?s:`f~Jtl#2i=i^z%rCp-

Optional arguments

--length – is the length of the key default=50
--alphabet – is the alphabet to use to generate the key default=ascii letters + punctuation symbols

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

Changelog

0.8.0

compatability code moved to compat.py

generate_secret_key management command.

Fix relating to https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/17627, package name change.

Pass form fields with HiddenInput widget through render_form_field

string.format usage / other refactoring / more support for Python 3

0.7.0

PEP8 codebase cleanup.

Improved python3 support.

Django 1.8 support.

0.6.4

Added python3 support.

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

jackkd / django-common