Use generated settings

↑ Parent: Python Utils

← Previous: Avoid generating translation terms for terms already available in Django framework

Default generated settings

MagiCircles automatically generates some settings, including cache for some data, to avoid fetching them in database every time someone loads a page. If you followed the instructions to set up a project in your local or in production, you had to call generate_settings at some point, or set up a cron to call it every 24 hours. This is what this command does.

By default, the following settings will be generated / data will be cached.

Saved/updated setting key	Description	Type
STAFF_CONFIGURATIONS	Staff configurations get cached (see Allow your staff team to change configurations)	Dict
LATEST_NEWS	Banners saved in staff configurations get cached (see "Latest news" below) Banners to celebrate characters birthdays get cached (see Characters and "Latest news" below)	Dict
FAVORITE _CHARACTERS, OTHER _CHARACTERS_KEYS, FAVORITE _CHARACTERS _BIRTHDAYS, FAVORITE _CHARACTERS _BIRTHDAY_TODAY, FAVORITE _CHARACTERS _NAMES, {character_type}, {character_type} _BIRTHDAYS, {character_type} _BIRTHDAY_TODAY, {character_type}_NAMES	Favorite characters and other characters options get cached (see "Characters below)	Lists
HOMEPAGE_ARTS	See Background illustrations	List of dicts
BACKGROUNDS	See Background illustrations	List of dicts
TOTAL_DONATORS	Number of donators this month (See DonateCollection in Default collections)	Int
DONATION_MONTH	Details of the current donation month (See DonateCollection in Default collections)	Dict with date (datetime), donations (int), percent_int (int), percent (float), reached_100_percent (bool)
SEASONAL_SETTINGS	Details of the current season (see Seasons)	Dict of season name → dict
GENERATED_DATE	Date when the settings were generated last	datetime

As well as these which are only meant to be used by MagiCircles internally:

Key	Description	Type
GENERATED_SHARE_IMAGES	Collage images generated automatically from share images of items and used as share images for list views	Dict
GENERATED_SHARE_IMAGES_LAST_DATE	Last date share images were generated, to make sure they get re-generated every week	datetime
PAST_ACTIVITY_TAGS_COUNT	Number of activities posted under past tags, displayed when looking them up and used to hide past tags that were never used	Dict

Latest news

The rotating banners that show up on the homepage are called "latest news".

Some banners get added by default:

Description	How many banners?	Links to	Configurable
Banners from staff configurations (see Allow your staff team to change configurations + user doc)	4 banners by default, but it's possible add as many banner settings as you want	Links setup in configuration	Using the staff configurations (see Allow your staff team to change configurations page (image, text, URL and wether the text shows up or not, if the image already has text)
Birthdays of favorite characters and other characters	1 banner per character	Item URL of character's collection	How long they show up, default: 1 day before and 12 days after (by calling getCharactersBirthdays yourself, see Customize default generated settings) The image, by having a birthday_banner image field or property in the character's model
Users who are celebrating their birthday today, sorted by popularity	All on 1 banner	Full list of users who are celebrating today	How many users show up max? Default: limited to 4 (by calling getUsersBirthdaysToday yourself, see Customize default generated settings
Seasonal limited hashtags	1 per limited hashtag	Activities posted using this tag	activity_tag_banner within season details, see Seasons

See Add more latest news below.

Set your own generated settings

${PROJECT}/management/commands/generate_settings.py:

from magi.tools import generateSettings

def generate_settings():
    something = ...
    ...
    generateSettings({
        'SOMETHING': something,
        ...
    })

It's that simple!

You can add anything you want in generated settings and access them wherever you want:

from django.conf import settings as django_settings

print django_settings.SOMETHING

Customize default generated settings

It's also possible to customize default generated settings by providing them yourself. Functions are available in magi.tools to call them yourself, see source code. Values you provide have priority, dicts and lists get merged.

One example is you can choose to display all donators instead of donators for this month only by calling totalDonators (instead of totalDonatorsThisMonth that gets called by default):

from magi.tools import totalDonators

def generate_settings():
    total_donators = totalDonators()
    ...
    generateSettings(
        'TOTAL_DONATORS': total_donators,
        ...
    )

Add more latest news

Provide LATEST_NEWS to the dict. It will later be sorted by priority, so you can use that. Otherwise, your news will be displayed first.

Latest news is a list of dicts. Each dict contains the following keys:

Key	Description	Default	Example
title	Name of the banner. It's required even when it's not displayed for SEO purpose	Required	Happy Birthday!
t_titles	Dict with names translated in various languages	Displays value of title	{'es': u'¡Feliz cumpleaños!' }
hide_title	Should the title be displayed or not? It's useful to display it if the banner doesn't contain any text	Text is displayed	True
url	URL to link to	Required	/cards/
ajax	An Ajax URL to load in a modal	Only regular link	/ajax/cards/?ajax_modal_only
image	Banner image	No image, shows a background color or image	banner1.png
background	Background image. The difference with a regular image is that it can be cropped if needed, to keep the same aspect ratio as the other banners (displayed as cover in CSS)	No background image	banner_background.png
color	Background color. Will not show up if a background image or image is set	Site's color, see Website settings	blue
css_classes	CSS classes to add to the banner, to allow to design certain banners a certain way with LESS	None	'important_banner blue_banner'
priority	A number that allows you to sort banners. The first banner is the most viewed. You can use negative values	1	2

→ Next: Templates utils