django-flexible-content

You can't always predict the shape your content will take. django-flexible-content lets you manage rich content without sacrificing flexibility or CMS usability.

What does it do?

With django-flexible-content:

• Your models can hold one or more content items (text, image, video embed)
• You can skin each type of item in the Django template language
• You can create new item types to suit your needs

Why would I use it?

Scenarios where django-flexible-content might help you:

• A blog where CMS users need precise control over each post's content (for example, placing a tweet in the middle of the page that complies with Twitter's display requirements).
  • With a Tweet item type, the user could enter a tweet's ID or URL in and display it per a standard Django template. This tweet could also appear between two giant chunks of text (other items, too).
• A site with a bunch of randomly-placed pages, even ones with a contact form, slideshow, or an introductory video.
  • Your pages can be managed in the CMS, and each one of those types of custom content can be a content item type.
• You want stylistic consistency that WYSIWYG-uploaded images can't provide.
  • A user uploads an image, and you generate its markup, not some JavaScript code.

Default Setup

Requirements:

• Your project is configured to load templates from app directories (it is by default).
• Your project uses the staticfiles app. It must also be configured to find staticfiles in app directories (it is by default).

That said, let's get started:

1. Install the package: pip install django-flexible-content

2. Add it to your settings file.

   INSTALLED_APPS = (
       'flexible_content',
       'flexible_content.default_item_types',  # Optional: Five basic types of content item.
       # other apps here
   )

3. Sync your database: python manage.py syncdb

4. For each model you want to add content items to, subclass ContentArea. For example, my_project/my_app/models.py:

   from django.db import models
   from flexible_content.models import ContentArea
   
   class BlogPost(ContentArea):
       title = models.CharField(max_length=50)
       slug = models.CharField(max_length=50)
       
       class Meta:
           verbose_name = "blog post"

   Note that this won't change your database schema at all: ContentArea is an abstract class that just adds helper functionality.

5. For each model that subclasses ContentArea, define a custom ModelAdmin that subclasses ContentAreaAdmin. For example, my_project/my_app/admin.py:

   from django.contrib import admin
   from flexible_content.admin import ContentAreaAdmin
   from .models import BlogPost
   
   class BlogPostAdmin(ContentAreaAdmin):
       pass
   
   admin.sites.register(BlogPost, BlogPostAdmin)

6. Run python manage.py collectstatic to collect all static files.

7. Start your web server and go to the admin for the BlogPost model (or whichever one you added it to). Observe, flexible content controls!

Rendering Content Items

Once your admin is set up, using flexible content in your templates is simple: the get_rendered_content method on your model (the one that subclasses ContentArea) will return all of its items as HTML. For our blog example above, you might edit my_project/templates/my_app/blog-detail.html as follows:

<h1>{{ object.title }}</h1>
{{ object.get_rendered_content|safe }}

Custom Templates

You can define your own templates that replace the ones included with the default_item_types app.

1. In one of your own app's templates directory (or in a folder specified by the TEMPLATE_DIRS setting), create a folder called flexible-content.

2. Inside of that directory, create an HTML file based on the type's slug:

   flexible-content/download.html
   flexible-content/image.html
   flexible-content/plain-text.html
   flexible-content/raw-html.html
   flexible-content/video.html
   

3. Ensure that those templates will be discovered first:

   • If you placed them in an app's templates directory, make sure that app comes before flexible_content.default_item_types in your INSTALLED_APPS setting.
   • If you placed them in an arbitrary template directory, make sure:
     • That directory is specified in the TEMPLATES_DIRS setting.
     • The filesystem loader (which uses TEMPLATE_DIRS) comes before the app_directories loader in the TEMPLATE_LOADERS setting.

Custom Item Types

I'll write this documentation soon, I promise! Until then, see flexible_content_types.default_item_types.models for examples. Once you've created those models that subclass BaseItem, you also need to specify that model in your settings:

FLEXIBLE_CONTENT = {
    'ITEM_TYPES': (
        'my_app.RichText',
        'default_item_types.Image'
    ),
}