canclón

Template name resolution for Django class-based views

Introduction

Canclón is a local name for the horned screamer, Anhima cornuta. This is a group of class-based views for Django. The simple flexibility and DRYness of this group of classes is comparable to that of horned screamer's horn.

Django's default method for template name resolution has a couple of not-so-niceties for more advanced developers, such as default template suffixes appended with an underscore (yay for dashes) and an assumption of HTML files (you might want to include other extension, such as .jade). This project gives you the flexibility of having everybody need to stick to a set of standards, or as well phase slowly into a standard by permitting more template names to be selected.

Warning:

Including this functionality in your project makes template name resolution DRYier and more flexible but a bit slower.

Canclón's TemplateNameResolverMixin allows you to calculate the template name for a class-based view using:

• The class-based view's model name, automatically calculated.
• A list of suffixes, e.g. your Create view could be "product-create.html", "product-edit.html" or "product-form.html".
• A list of separators, i.e. take "product-create.html" or "product_create.html".
• A list of extensions, i.e. "html", "jade".

Warning:

You will override Django's template name resolution method.

Installation

You first need pip installed. Also, you might want a virtualenv (which will usually give you a scoped pip, too).

Use the command:

To install the latest official release, use:

pip install django-canclon

To install the latest version, use:

pip install git+git://github.com/jleeothon/canclon.git

Voilà, instalation finished.

Usage

Extend canclon.TemplateNameResolverMixin to your class to enable functionality.

Override the class' template_suffixes, template_suffix_separators and template_extensions:

class ProductCreateView(TemplateNameResolverMixin, CreateView):
    template_suffixes = ('create', 'editing', 'form')
    template_suffix_separators = ('-', '_')
    template_extensions = ('html', 'jade')

The default separator is a dash ('-') and de default extension is html.

You can also set the default separators and extensions in your settings.py:

# settings.py

TEMPLATE_SUFFIX_SEPARATORS = ('-*-',) # feeling fancy in this project
TEMPLATE_EXTENSIONS = ('jade',)

Based on suffixes, suffix joints and extensions, a list of all posible combinations is returned. They take the form 1/234.5, where:

• 1 is the app label
• 2 is the model name
• 3 is separator (joint)
• 4 is the suffix
• 5 is the file extension

When a suffix is an empty string, the separator and suffix are omitted.

Recommendations

For any new category of class-based views, e.g. a "Search" view, create a custom inheritable class to avoid repeating the suffix and separator everywhere. As such, TemplateNameResolverMixin will be your class' "grandparent".

For single custom class-based views, inherit direct from TemplateNameResolverMixin.

Don't use too many suffixes, extensions or separators, as this will make resolution slower.

Troubleshooting

If you stumble upon bug, file a bug in the "issues" section. If possible, helping track and solve the bug would be cool.

Enhancement proposals

Support "atoms" apart from iterables

Using template_suffixes = '-' instead of ('-',) may be nice.

Lazy evaluation

Not exactly like I can do anything about it.

If Django could receive a lazy object for get_template_names instead of a pre-evaluated iterable, this implementation would be both more time-efficient and space-efficient in best and average scenarios.