Mezzanine-flexipage is an extension to the Mezzanine Content Management Platform designed to make it easy for template designers to add and remove content areas simply by adding or removing variables from a template.
In practice, this means that someone without knowledge of Mezzanine (or Django/Python) can create templates with an arbitrary number of content fields purely by specifying those content fields in the template and without needing to manually create the corresponding model or alter the context being provided to the template.
At its heart this application is merely a Page model (named FlexiPage) with a RichContent Model foreign keyed to it (named FlexiContent). The value in the application comes from the view and Django admin logic which generates and displays the correct FlexiContent model by introspecting the template for which the context is being generated for.
Install the current version off PyPi:
pip install mezzanine-flexipage
In your settings.py file, install flexipages;
INSTALLED_APPS = (
'django.contrib.admin',
...
'flexipage', # Add the flexipage app
)
Then tell mezzanine-flexipage what your flexi templates are (start.html comes with the package):
FLEXI_TEMPLATES = (
('start.html','start'),
)
Add the mezzanine-flexipage database tables.
python manage.py syncdb
The option to create Flexi Pages will now be available in the admin site from the Pages page.
In order to change the number of content areas, add or remove variables starting with flexi_ from the template itself. Mezzanine-flexipage will then introspect the template and create or remove Rich Text Areas from so that the variables on the page are supported by models created in the database. The admin will then reflect these changes and whilst logged in with staff privileges the changes will update on the site proper by refreshing the page.
For example, to add an additional field to the page:
{{ flexi_new_content_area }}
... and to have the same content editable on the page wrap it in mezzanine's editable template tag:
{% editable flexi_new_content_area.content %}
{{ flexi_new_content_area.content|richtext_filter|safe }}
{% endeditable %}
This can be repeated with an arbitrary number of variables (ensuring the prefix flexi_ for each variable).
Mezzanine-flexipage has support for Django's Form classes in a similar fashion as with the rich text areas, allowing forms to be added to the page via the inclusion of a flexiform prefixed variable. However, the system differs in that these forms need to be created prior to use and, similar to the templates, will need to be added (along with their containing application) to the sites settings.py:
INSTALLED_APPS = (
'django.contrib.admin',
...
'flexipage', # Add the flexipage app
'feedback' # Our app with the form
)
FLEXI_FORMS = (
'feedback.forms.FeedbackForm',
)
... where feedback.forms.FeedbackForm looks like:
from django.models import Model
class Feedback(Model):
positive_feedback = models.TextField()
from flexipage.forms import FlexiForm
class FeedbackForm(FlexiModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Feedback
This form would then be available in any flexipage template as:
{{ flexiform_FeedbackForm }} # or
{{ flexiform_FeedbackForm.as_p }} # or
{{ flexiform_FeedbackForm.as_ul }} # etc
If you want to call get the form into the context of the page, but don't want it to render, call the models flexi_nothing and then use the variable however it is needed:
{{ flexiform_Feedback.flexi_nothing }}
{% crispy flexiform_Feedback %} # for example
If you need the form to redirect the form after it is successfully POSTed, add a flexi_intermediate method to your FlexiForm. To redirect to '/thanks/' after a successful POSTed form, add:
from django.shortcuts import redirect
Class FeedbackForm(FlexiForm):
def flexi_intermediate(self):
return redirect('/thanks/')
Finally, if you want to include Django's simpler Form class, use FlexiForm and simply add a save() method to it(which does the form handling and saving to database). The behaviour will be otherwise identical to FlexiModelForm.
Assuming you are using virtualenvwrapper, first install mezzanine-flexipage (this will install all dependencies).
mkvirtualenv mezzanine-flexipage
pip install mezzanine-flexipage
Create a mezzanine project:
mezzanine-project myproject
cd myproject
In your settings.py file, install flexipages;
INSTALLED_APPS = (
'django.contrib.admin',
...
'flexipage', # Add the flexipage app
)
Then tell mezzanine-flexipage what your flexi templates are (start.html comes with the package):
FLEXI_TEMPLATES = (
('start.html','start'),
)
Where the first string denotes the name of the template file and the second string denotes how the template will be displayed in the admin.
Create your database (sqlite by default, as specified in local_settings.py), using:
python manage.py createdb
...and follow the prompts.
Finally, create a local copy of the Mezzanine templates, which will also copy over start.html specified earlier in FLEXI_TEMPLATES:
python manage.py collecttemplates
Run the mezzanine application with:
python manage.py runserver
Login to the admin site and within the Pages page, click the dropdown at the top marked "Add..." and select Flexi Page. This will take you to the Add Flexi Page page.
Add a title to the new page and select 'start' from the template name dropdown. This will refresh the page with the correct Flexi Content rich content items, and enable you to add content as desired. This will now allow you to add and remove rich content variables via the template.
Refer to the section under Template Introspection for more information.
In order to run tests, flexipage will need to be installed to a working mezzanine environment (the instructions above suffice).
Once installed, from the installed mezzanine application:
python manage.py test flexipage
Will run a set of tests across the utilities and models of the flexipage application.
- Show all relevant FlexiContent elements in the admin without needing to save a FlexiPage model.
- Include the ability to automatically scan the flexi\pages directory and pickup all templates in the directory, removing the need to put FLEXI_TEMPLATES in settings
- Complete tests