The django-url-framework will help you get your django applications done faster.
It automatically detects urls in a django application, similar to the way Ruby on Rails does it with the Controller-Action-View implementation.
Controllers are created in each django application with a predefined file naming scheme (foo_controller.py) and extending ActionController. The ActionController contains methods often used in a web context, and does common request-related processing.
Each application can have multiple controllers thus allowing for smaller classes in a larger application.
Each function not starting with an underscore becomes it's own action. By simply returning a dictionary from the action, it will be rendered with the template named using the controller/action.html naming scheme.
Each action and controller can override certain global settings such as using a custom template name or giving the action (or controller) a custom name.
From pypi:
pip install django-url-framework
Alternatively just check out the source here and run python setup.py install
INSTALLED_APPS = (
...,
'django_url_framework',
...
)import django_url_framework
from django.conf import settings
django_url_framework.site.autodiscover(settings.INSTALLED_APPS)
urlpatterns = patterns('',
(r'^', include(django_url_framework.site.urls) ),
)project/
app/
cart_controller.py
foo_controller.py
templates/
cart/
add.html
index.html
remove.html
foo/
bar.html
class CartController(ActionController):
def edit(self, request, id = None):
return {}
def remove(self, request, id)
return {}
def index(self, request):
return {}
class FooController(ActionController):
def index(self, request, object_id = None):
return {}
def bar(self, request):
return {}
def bar__delete(self, request):
return {}The following URLs will be created:
/cart/ <- will go to *index action*
/cart/(\w+)/
/cart/edit/
/cart/edit/(\w+)/
/cart/remove/(\w+)/
/foo/
/foo/(\w+)/
/foo/bar/
/foo/bar/delete/
You can easily access your URLs using django's built-in {% url ... %} tag. Simply call {% url cart_index %} or {% url cart_delete id %} and it will work as you would expect.
There is also a helper tag for faster linking within the same controller.
{% go_action remove %} will take you to /cart/remove/. To use it, {% load url_framework %} in your templates.
The controller name is derived from it's class name, by converting camelcase into underscores.
For instance FooController is simple foo, while FooBarController becomes foo_bar.
You can give the controller a custom name with the controller_name parameter:
class Controller(ActionController):
controller_name = "foo"By default templates are stored in the subdirectory with the controller's name, and the templates are given the same filename as the action name. If a request is determinned to be AJAX in nature, the template filename is prefixed with an underscore. Example:
class FooController(ActionController):
def foo_action(self, request):
return {}
```
File structure:
```
/foo/foo_action.html
/foo/_foo_action.html <--- for AJAX requests.
```
You can disable this prefixing on a per action or per controller level.
For all actions in a controller:
````python
class FooController(ActionController):
no_ajax_prefix = True
```
For a single action:
````python
from django_url_framework.decorators.action_options
class FooController(ActionController):
@no_ajax_prefix
def foo_action(self, request):
return {}
```
## Action names
````python
class FooController(ActionController):
def action(self, request):
return {}
```
Creates the following URL:
```
/controller/action/
```
Double underscores `__` in action names are converted to slashes in the urlconf, so: `action__name` becomes `/action/name/`.
````python
class Controller(ActionController):
def action__foo(self, request):
return {}
```
Creates the following URL:
```
/controller/action/foo/
```
### Decorate to name
You can also decorate functions to give them different names and prefixes and urls. See decorator package for more details, here is an example:
```python
@action_options.name("foo")
@action_options.prefix("prefix_")
def bar(self, request):
return {}
```
will result in:
```
/controller/prefix_foo/
```
The action will now have the template `/controller/foo.html`. Prefixes do not affect template naming.
## Action parameters
Providing a third parameter to an action will create a URLconf for that parameter, like so:
````python
def action(self, request, object_id):
return {}
```
Will allow you to call that action with:
```
/controller/action/(\w+)/ <--- parameter consisting of A-Za-z0-9_
```
If you make the argument optional, an additional URLconf entry is created allowing you to call the action without the third argument.
```python
def action(self, request, object_id = None):
return {}
```
Results in:
```
/controller/action/
/controller/action/(\w+)/ <--- optional argument consisting of A-Za-z0-9_
```
### Decorate for custom parameters
You can also create your own custom parameters by using the `@url_parameters` decorator to the function.
```python
from django_url_framework.decorators.action_options import url_paramters
class Controller(ActionController):
@url_parameters(r'(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d\d)')
def action(self, request, year, month):
...
return {}
```
The above will create the following url patterns:
```
/controller/action/(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d\d)
```
*Note the lack of trailing slash - you must provide this yourself.*
### Custom url for any action
You can write your own urlconf for each action, by decorating it with `@urlconf`.
```python
from django_url_framework.decorators.action_options import urlconf
class Controller(ActionController):
@action_options.urlconf([
r'^bar/(?P<year>\d{4})/$',
r'^bar/(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d\d)/$',
r'^foo/(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d\d)/(?P<day>\d\d)/$'
],
do_not_autogenerate=True)
def action(self, request, year, month=None, day=None):
...
return {}
```
The above will create the following url patterns:
```
/controller/bar/(?P<year>\d{4})/
/controller/bar/(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d\d)/$
/controller/foo/(?P<year>\d{4})/(?P<month>\d\d)/(?P<day>\d\d)/$
```
The `do_not_autogenerate` argument is **true** by default and will prevent any urls for this action
from being autogenerated. If `do_not_autogenerate` were to be set to false in the example below,
the following url would also be created:
```
/controller/action/
```
This URL would not actually work since the `year` argument is required the `action` function.
## Flash messages
The ActionController also has a _flash instance variable that allows you to send messages to the user that can survive a redirect. Simply use
```python
self._flash.append("Message")
self._flash.error("Error message")
```
The flash messages can be either messages or error messages. The flash object is automatically exported into the context and you can use it as such:
```HTML+Django
{% if flash.has_messages %}
{% for message in flash.get_and_clear %}
{% if message.is_error %}<span class='icon-error'></span>{% endif %}
<p class="{{message.type}}">{{message}}</p>
{% endfor %}
{% endif }
```
## Before and After each action
You can override `_before_filter` and/or `_after_filter` to perform certain actions and checks before or after an action. Read more in `ActionController` docs.
These methods accept the "request" parameter which is an HTTP request object for this request.
```python
class AccountController(ActionController):
def _before_filter(self, request):
campaign_id = request.GET.get("campaign_id")
try:
self._campaign = Campaign.objects.get(pk=campaign_id)
except Campaign.DoesNotExist:
self._campaign = None
```
You can disable the before and after filters by decorating any action with the `@disable_filters` decorator.
Example:
```python
from django_url_framework.decorators.action_options import disable_filters
@disable_filters
def action(self, request):
return {}
```
One of the great features of django url framework is that you can require login for all actions in a controller by simply decorating the before_filter with a decorator to require logging in, see next section!
## Authentication
To require login on an action use the `@login_required` decorator provided by django-url-framework. The decorator also works on `_before_filter`.
```python
from django_url_framework.decorators import login_required
class AccountController(ActionController):
@login_required
def action(self, request):
return {}
```
If the user isn’t logged in, redirect to `settings.LOGIN_URL`, passing the current absolute path in the query string. Example: `/accounts/login/?next=/polls/3/`.
`login_required()` also takes an optional `login_url` parameter. Example:
```python
from django_url_framework.decorators import login_required
class AccountController(ActionController):
@login_required(login_url="/login/")
def action(self, request):
return {}
```
By default, the path that the user should be redirected to upon successful authentication is stored in a query string parameter called "next". If you would prefer to use a different name for this parameter, `login_required()` takes an optional `redirect_field_name` parameter.
Additionally you can use `@superuser_required`, `@permission_required(permission_instance)` and `@must_be_member_of_group(group_name="some_group")`.
## Only POST? (or GET or anything...)
You can limit what http methods a function can be called with.
The example below limits the `update` action to only **POST** and **DELETE** http methods.
```python
from django_url_framework.decorators import http_methods
class Controller(ActionController):
@http_methods.POST
@http_methods.DELETE
def update(self, request):
return {}
```
By default all actions can be called with all http methods.
## Custom template extensions
When using jade or something similar you can specify a custom extension for all templates in the controller.
```python
class FooController(ActionController):
#custom extension for all templates in this controller
template_extension = "jade"
```