Drink

Alpha Web framework & sample mini CMS.

Aims to be quite generic all-in-one-but-minimalistic web+database high-level framework.

• Documentation
• Bugtracker
• GitHub page

Dependencies

Additionally you can install paste or gevent for better performances, the fastest backend will be used by default. For "production" setups, I recommand using uwsgi, helper scripts are provided.

For the full dependencies list, open the requirements.txt file. Note that some requirements are not mandatory.

• ZODB has a fallback allowing you to test drink without any C extension.
• setproctitle can be missing
• repoze.debug and weberror are only developer's requirement and may be dropped in the future
• Paste guaranties a good experience, but uwsgi + nginx is definitely the killer combination

Even if it should be portable, Drink is currently only tested on Linux.

Install

Just fetch the source archive and unpack it:

 wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/d/drink/drink-DRINK_VERSION.tar.bz2
 tar jxvf drink-DRINK_VERSION.tar.bz2

Then install it (as root/admin):

 cd drink-DRINK_VERSION
 python setup.py install

Alternatively, if you prefer to not install drink on your system, unix users will find a make_project.sh script at the root of the sources folder, more experienced users can just use virtualenv:

cd drink-DRINK_VERSION
virtualenv --no-site-packages drink_test_folder
. drink_test_folder/bin/activate
python setup.py install

Create and run your drink project

Wherever you are on the virtual environment or directly accessing your system, go to a folder of your choice (like "My Web Projects") and then type:

drink make

Follow the instructions, here is a sample session:

Project folder: my-cms
Additional python package with drink objects
(can contain dots): cms_extensions
Ip to use (just ENTER to allow all):
HTTP port number (ex: "80"), by default 0.0.0.0:5000 will be used:
Objects to activate:
a gtd-like tasklist - tasks : y
a wiki-like web page in markdown format - markdown : y
a tool to find objects in database - finder : y
a filesystem proxy, allow sharing of arbitrary folder or static websites - filesystem : y
Additional root item name (just ENTER to finish): Private
 0 - Folder index
 1 - WebFile
Select the desired type index: 1
Additional root item name (just ENTER to finish):
Project created successfuly.

You can now go into the /tmp/my-cms folder and run

- drink db (to start the database daemon)
- drink run (to start the web server)

If you run with DEBUG=1 in environment, templates and python code should reload automatically when changed.
For static files changes, no restart is needed.

To start drink application, the easiest way it to type:

drink start

If you run into troubles, try:

 DEBUG=1 drink start

Getting sources/Contributing

See GitHub page.

The main ideas behind

It should handle most of javascript, html & forms creation for you, for very fast prototype implementation.

Then you'r free to put your hands into html/css/js and customize to your precise requirements.

Some debugging middleware are supported, edit drink/settings.ini for details.

Goals

• Add features at ONE place in ONE language (html/css/js may be required for some advanced/custom usages)
• Be fast, with built-in search engine
• Ajax (ajaj in fact) - with nice fallbacks for old browsers
• No SQL
• Website: as simple as a nested dict-like objects tree, endpoints (last element of URL) are object's properties & methods
• Make it as productive as possible for most generic tasks

Out of the box, it is something between a wiki and a cms, probably a good base for a lightweight web CMS / Intranet / Forum / etc!

Main Features

• Built-in search engine

• Multi-user with access control (group based) at each level

• Automatic views and javascript-friendly requests, with regard to each object permissions

• Automatic object edition's form generation

• Webpage edition live preview, client-side form validation

• Comes with some pre-developped objects:

  • folder index (sortable with D&D)
  • file (upload your own file, also allows D&D)
  • Web page ( markdown only )
  • Simple TODO list/TODOs (WIP)
  • Filesystem mountpoint (alpha)

  And of course special elements like Groups & Users !.

• Very user friendly (once doc will be there!)

Issues

• no documentation yet (default manager account, login/password: admin/admin )
• no auto tests yet
• not very powerful yet

Current release changes

• Css update, uses skeleton as base
• uWSGI integration
• Real passwords using hashing
• D&Drop form is more integrated
• Jquery updated, also Whoosh > 2.0 is required now
• Introduction of a simple generic actions framework
• Items are easily customizable in list mode as well (but not their actions yet)
• Gcalendar support for Calendar (+ extended Task object)
• New type: Choice, Duration (very basic)
• Text type can have different subtypes now (ex: password)
• Authentication now recovers your original location
• Shortcuts/Keyboard navigation, press "h" to see help
• Add an "in-memory" database, using pickles to save state (useful for testing purposes)
• Templates dropped support for static HTML, more and more content comes with js/jQuery + JSON
• Simplify easy permissions panel, also add possibility to add someone as "trusted" so it can inherit your permissions on documents
• Javascript refactor started
• As always: Fixes & Bugs

Roadmap

0.1 (wip)

• add more types to default form edition
  • object_path => integrate it to markdown editor
• generalize edit & _edit behavior, with a special return value
• standardize json answers {'success': true} or {'error': true, 'message': 'permission denied'} or {'redirect': url, **kw}
• change cookie on password change => Create session cookie !
• handle per-owner "recycle bin", "changes log" & groups
• clean javascript to provide a library, allowing mobile detection & adaptation
• buildbot & virtualenv
• only accept object move if it succeded on server
• allow custom extensions
• Per-user group-list, showing in permissions panels (Authenticator will constitute a cache of sets with 'path': permission)
• allow rss via http://www.freewisdom.org/projects/python-markdown/RSS
• HomePage object: Login-splash+UserDashboard write user homepages (with login & passwd & name & surname change) / splash-like if not logged-in
• think about comments ( as property of some Model ?) - commentlist ?
• edit form: only send "dirty" values when possible
• add some recursive permissions setter
• "background processes" for each user / sessions
• theme support (config entry + template & static path)
• ensure proper checks are correct at server side
• Form object?
• pack should call http://packages.python.org/Whoosh/api/index.html?highlight=optimize#whoosh.index.Index.optimize on whoosh
• add calltips everywhere
• default content for every user
• Think about opening WebFiles in mail client as attached file...
• add markdown support to tasks comment
• improve link support (javascript popup) in markdown so it's easy to link tasks to any object

Fixes:

• only returns requested range in TODO List / generic solution to request range of child
• Rename Tasks/TODO List to calendar
• remove Ctrl+Enter conflict on Markitup
• /users as user => 401 (should list instead)
• search => 401 by default (should be allowed)
• investigated fileupload D&D bugs:
  • files >4GB are making crazy js loops
  • files ~>500MB may hang the request & cause timeout

0.2

• zip importer
• pdf with pypdf
• doc
• project support (using drink as a base)
• integrate imgviewer (image folder type)

0.3

• multi-object page
• spreadsheet ?
• integrate graph library (http://www.jqplot.com/)

0.4

• "real" sessions ?
• chat program (introduce webhooks ?)

0.5

• forum
• more tests

0.6

• gadgets (google search, rss reader, clock, xkcd, ?)

0.7

• permissions setting admin object

0.8

• user interface cleanup

0.9

• doc & fix but minor improvements

1.0

• stable release

1.x

• homepage /user pages focus