==============================================================================
A Brief Guide to the New Admin Backend or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the App Engine

by Will McCutchen <will@keyingredient.com>
==============================================================================

Hooking up a very basic admin site can be done in as little as four steps,
assuming you already have your models defined and corresponding
djangoforms.ModelForms for each one you'd like to manage in the admin. If not,
you should probably take care of that now.


1.  Create the admin configuration file.

    Choose a subdirectory from which you'd like to run the admin site (I tend
    to choose ./backend/ for this purpose).

    Add to that subdirectory a file called "admin.py" with contents like the
    following:

        import os
        os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'settings'
        from google.appengine.dist import use_library
        use_library('django', '1.1')

        from ki.shared import newadmin

        # Import the models and forms you'll be using in the admin site
        from core import models, forms

        # Create an admin object with the prefix you'll use in app.yaml and
        # register models and forms to manage
        admin = newadmin.SimpleAdmin('/backend')
        admin.register(models.Application, forms.ApplicationForm)
        admin.register(models.Account, forms.AccountForm)

        if __name__ == '__main__':
           admin.run(debug=False)

    Note: The actual name of the file doesn't matter, you'll just have to
    refer to it in your app.yaml by whatever name you give it.


2.  Add an entry for the admin site to your app.yaml.

    Something like this should do the trick, assuming you're installing it to
    backend/admin.py as in the example above.  If you're not, adjust the url
    and script paths accordingly.

        - url: /backend/.*
          script: backend/admin.py
          secure: optional


3.  Make the static media available at the URL /static/admin/ by symlinking
    ./static/admin to ./ki/shared/newadmin/static


4.  Add the admin templates to settings.TEMPLATE_DIRS.

    You need to add the path to the admin templates directory to the
    settings.TEMPLATE_DIRS setting (because our Jinja template rendering
    infrastructure uses this setting to find templates, even if you're not
    using Django at all).

    Mine usually ends up looking like this:

        TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
            os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'templates'),
            os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'ki', 'shared', 'newadmin', 'templates')
        )

    If you don't actually have a settings file in the root of your project,
    you can just add one with only the TEMPLATE_DIRS setting defined, and it
    should work (theoretically).