Widgets

Introducion

This app is about showing different additional content for different pages. The additional content(the widgets) is shown in “areas” which, are defined in settings:

AREAS = getattr(settings, 'PT_AREAS',
            (('sidebar', _('Sidebar'),),)
            )

and in the template(s):

{% for widget in areas.sidebar %}
{{ widget|safe }}
{% endfor %}

Next, there is Pagetype, which is a small model with a name and and an optional another pagetype as parent. Pagetypes and areas gets combined trough the TypeArea model, which is where the widgets are organized, so the content of an area can be different for different pagetypes.

In code:

from pagetools.widgets.models import *
from pagetools.widgets.utils import get_areas_for_type

pt1 = PageType.objects.create(name="pt1")
ta1 = TypeArea.objects.create(pagetype=pt1, area="sidebar")

w1 = ContentWidget.objects.create(name="w1", content="Foo")
wia1 = WidgetInArea.objects.create(content_object=w1, typearea=ta1, position=1, enabled=True)

get_areas_for_type(pt1, {})
>> {'sidebar': ['\nFoo\n']}

Admin

In the backend, most things can be done in the PageType admin. All subclasses of BaseWidget are listed in the “Add Widget” section. Other Classes may be added also, as long as they have a render callable and a unique name attribute, through the WidgetInArea (Included Widgets) admin.

WidgetPagelikeMixin

To define a pagetype

  • add a ‘pagetype_name’ to the context_data or

  • define pagetype_name or

  • overwrite get_pagetype_name()

ContextProcessors

In pagetools.widgets.context_processors

  • base_pagetype Uses the pagetype named “base”

  • pagetype_from_view Tries to find an attribute “pagetype_name” in the view. (So this is possible: thirdparty.views.FooView.pagetype_name=”special”)

Some notes:

  • Pagetypes can be nested, however this is only useful if you have multiple areas (e.g. sidebar and header).

  • A Pagetype called “base” will be used as default/fallback if exists.

  • Creating custom widget classes is easy. A templatetag class that doesn’t require arguments can just be added to the PT_TEMPLATETAG_WIDGETS setting.