***** I'm aware some of my terminology is also in the Django dictionary. None of what I write here is intending to use the Django meaning (templates, for example) *****
I am developing an application in Django that will be a customizable template driven data forms application (a project estimation tool that will allow a set of templates to be created and customized based on the type of project).
I want the application to provide a template editor, then regular users will estimate their work for the project/release by starting off from these templates. The templates would be quite simple; Maybe a dozen or so templates, each with categories and between 2 and 10 line items (tasks) per category where the users would enter their estimation information (hours, description, etc). It would also be great if the users were able to add custom fields for a unique feature that isn't part of the standard template.
I know how to make a rudimentary version of this from scratch fairly quickly, but given how many Django packages are out there, I figured there may be something to help me.
so, do you know of any packages that would help facilitate this or provide me a solid foundation for my project?
Thanks!
BW
Related
Let's say I'm writing a complex site in django with wikis, forums, ... or writing my own apps that I intend to reuse from different sites.
I really want to create, for example, a wiki page that has a forum at the bottom, or reuse my previously written wiki app with a different graphical layout.
What is the best way to structure my app to allow this kind of reuse?
So far, I have been giving apps their own urls in urls.py. This however does not work if I want to combine multiple apps together in a single page.
Additionally, most of the apps I found online come with their own templates, which has the full html, and do not separate the logic of creating / preparing a context from that of handling a request and generating a reply.
What is the best practice here? What do you do? edit the templates that come from applications you download online? refactor them to fit in your application?
what should I do for my own applications? structure them so they have a method to get the context, and a method to render it?
Django hasn't great support out of the box to component-oriented architectures. I find this problematic some times too. You'll face to problems here.
Architecture
Code
Architecture: As Django is not component oriented, all the apps aren't component oriented neither. The designers and coders for those apps haven't thought about that. So they've just built "views" to interface with their apps. You'll need to get something more "pluggable".
Code: Once you decide to build that, you'll have to find what support you have for that. Most Django apps are pretty well coded, so you won't have much code in views, but abstracted in other places. That way you could reuse that code and build your own components.
Example: Suppose you're working with a third-party Wiki app. That wiki has a view to display highest ranked Tags and other view to create a wiki entry. If the code is good enough (that I'm assuming it is because Django has a pretty good community), you could refactor that to use components. The view to create an entry must be using some Form, that you can plug in your own site. And the view to get highest ranked tags probably uses some utility function, or some Tag manager's method. In that case you could refactor it to your own needs.
Hope it helps.
I'm looking for TYPO3 template libraries. They don't need to be free. I'm looking for real Typo3 templates, ready to import into a vanilla Typo3 installation, not just HTML or even PSD templates.
The reason I'm asking is that we have a number of customers with very tight budget. We'd like to give them a number of templates to choose from.
There were such projects, but I assume that most of them are just finished now. TYPO3 has no default data/content structure and therefore it's hard to build useful sets as every implementation can be very individual.
For your own low-budget production I'd suggest to create some very typical raw implementations with sample data and some kind of preconfigured extensions ie.
CMS+ News + contact form + gallery,
CMS + News + FAQ...
etc...
Then you can also prepare common TypoScript element for each scenario and finally just use any HTML template and map your prepared TS with minimal modifications.
Using TemplaVoila you don't need to change any single char in the HTML templates and it takes no more than 2 morning coffees (when mapping a simple template).
A simple Typo3 template isn't really difficult to make but I think you mean a better browser compatibility support. Personally I've good experience with YAML.
I'm not aware of anything like that out there, but is it just for content sites, or are you looking for sites with more functionality?
Any template can be adapted to TYPO3, you can see here http://webdevelopers.thedemo.ca/ where in the space of about an hour we grabbed a template from http://www.oswd.org/ and turned it into a TYPO3 site. It's rough and messy, but shows the idea.
I am a computer programmer by training but have been away from web development for a while. I am doing a little bit of background research on various Python web development frameworks. I understand that Django, Grok / Zope 3, and Pylons are all good solid frameworks, but have little in the way of background working with them. Can someone explain to me the difference in approach of the each of the frameworks, and where one shines when compared to the others?
My specific use case is in building a web application that will recommend products to users based on a variety of user supplied information. Thus, it will take a fair bit of user input in the shape of a basic profile, product preferences, attempt to establish social relationships between users. It will also need to support staff uploading products into the system with labeled features that can be then matched to users.
On the last point, would parts of Plone help with providing an interface for non-tech people to upload products and descriptions of the products? Are piece of Plone easy to borrow? Seems like I shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel in terms of having a way for people to upload items for sale / recommendation along with some metadata to describe the items. Thanks for the help.
Based on your background and requirements, I'd advise you to go with something like http://pinaxproject.com/ which is based on Django.
Pyramid (the successor to Pylons) is a very low-level framework and you need to either choose the libraries or write all your application code yourself. For someone experienced this makes sense and gives you full control over your code. But it is a bit of a hurdle if you start from scratch and aren't familiar with the available libraries.
Django and Grok are both high level frameworks, with Django being the more popular choice. If you aren't familiar yet with using object databases or URL traversal, Grok is more time consuming to learn.
Plone is not suited for your use-case. It's a content management system and not a general web framework. Very little of the libraries it uses can be reused in a different context, certainly none of its UI. If you want to provide an engaging user experience with personalized content, Plone isn't for you - that's not what its been build to handle.
Disclaimer: I'm a release manager for Plone and Zope 2 / Zope Toolkit and have used Pyramid but not Django.
Dolmen project is a CMS built on top of Grok. Is very simple, but there are very few that use it. If you go with Grok, you could be able to reuse the GUI.
But As Hanno said, Grok is more time-consuming to learn than Django. Also Django has far more users than Grok.
The advantage of using Grok is that you can profit from Zope Component Architecture almost without writing ZCML and using decorators instead.
With Pyramid/Pylons you get a very simple framework and nothing else. It is a decoupled framework, so you are free to use whatever templating enginge you want (Mako, Genshi, Jinja, Cheetah), you are free to choose sqlalchemy, zodb, mongoDb, etc., and you are also free to choose the url mapping scheme (traversal vs. django-style mapping or a combination of both). You can also use ZCA here if you want. For starters this might become quite confusing or verbose.
Django is a kind of monolithic framework that gives you one way to do stuff. That's why it's easy to learn and a very good option. But, in my experience, you sometimes get to a point where you want to deviate from Django standards and it simply cannot be done without patching a bunch of stuff.
And, as for Zope3, I'd recommend you to download a copy of BlueBream and se how it does for you.
As a Plone user I can say that creating Content Objects in Plone is difficult. There is not much documentation on how to do it and it is complicated. Some recommend using UML and specialized Plone products to make it easier but that introduces yet another dependency.
I mention the problem with content objects because your "products" (not the same as a Plone product) would probably be represented in Plone as a content object which you would need to write yourself.
Plone is best when users and editors are entering and approving text in the form of news articles, press releases, photos etc. When that is the use case there are predefined content objects for such things so one does not need to write them oneself.
--Jonathan Mark
What is a good django open source app that I can learn from? Something that follows best practices, and covers the majority of features and isn't overly complicated?
This would depend on your current level of knowledge of python and django.
If you are just starting to use django, I suggest you take a look in django documentation. It is well specified and clear. If you have some project in mind, start working on it while looking up for best practices about specific parts. For python coding style try to follow the pep 8 style guide.
If you already have done some work with django there are many sites lie these:
http://djangopackages.com/categories/apps/
http://www.django-apps.com/
What I do nowdays is look into django contrib apps (admin, auth, comments, flatpages), which are built based on the rest of django. This gives the best ways on how to write my apps.
Following the django comments framework (object independent), I am working on an app django-valuate (object independent attachment of ratings, likebuttons etc. through template tags)
These are some of my views. I have also starred this question, as I would like to know about some different perspectives and if mine are sound.
I've found djangobb (www.djangobb.org) to be a complete application, production quality and relatively simple. I use it as a base for my application which has nothing to do with forums and bb.
cloc output: only 3000 lines of python code in 30 files, another 2900 lines of templates html
I do not think there would be any one specific app that would cover all/most features of Django since the concept of the Django app itself is to perform specific/related functionality.
Having said that, a popular Django app is django-registration. Its popularity stems from the obvious requirement of most webapps to have User authentication and also its extremely easy to integrate with a Django project.
The best approach perhaps would be to keep trying the tons of open source Django apps available on the net. You can browse through http://www.djangopackages.com/ and http://www.django-apps.com/ to start getting your hands dirty.
snipt.net, a code sharing site:
https://github.com/lionburger/snipt
Review Board, a code review web app
https://github.com/reviewboard/reviewboard/tree/master/reviewboard
rietveld, another code review on app engine, by GVR himself. You need to know a bit of Django before digging into this source code since the Django models don't work on App Engine, GAE db model is used instead.
http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk
Brand new to CMS:
With Joomla or other CMS, If I want to use my own design, do I have to make it a template first using proprietary code of some sort = ie using some Joomla templating language - or is using my own design with Joomla simple and independent?
I am not sure the role "templates" play with Joomla and other CMS. I gather they can be used as a complete "pre-made" design where you just tweak it, but are they necessary as a base of some sort to using my own designs? I am proficient with HTML and CSS. I also have been playing around with various Jquery Plugin's for my UI.
Ideally I would like to create any design I can think of with any layout I create and use CMS simply for its database and plugins etc such as a blog or calender back end. I might use it for more features as I learn about them. Do I need to use a "template" or create a "template" to do this?
Thanks!
{edit}
You have to create a template (or change an existing one), how else will the CMS know where to add the information into as the template is a HTML, CSS and Javascript Page group devoid of information and some HTML Tags replaced with CMS Specific tags, which tells the CMS where to add the information. It also include certain files telling the CMS the Name, and othe information of the template.
The First step in creating a template is to have a design.
Do your design in HTML and CSS. (Preferably using the CMS Template folder/directory structure.)
For Joomla use the information in this post: How should I go about writing a Joomla! template?
In Joomla jQuery have to be used in compatibility mode.
The CMS will supply the information, you supply the design and tell the CMS
{/edit}
The Template is the design container, whether you create one from scratch or reuse a current template. I initially used one of the pre-installed templates (together with the documentation) to learn some of the complexities of designing the template. (ex. structure, and what is possible.)
Please also look at my answer to this question How should I go about writing a Joomla! template? as it is a pretty good beginners guideline for template designers in Joomla (Even if I have to say it myself) with a couple of other resources linked in as well.
A Joomla template is nothing but HTML layout stylised using CSS. So to create your own templates you need a good grasp on HTML and CSS.
Joomla, by default provides a couple of templates to start with.
If you are just beginning, creating your own template is not where you want to start...learn more about setting up Joomla. You have enough problems there :)
Joomla! 1.5: A User's Guide is a great beginner book. It takes you through learning Joomla, what templates are, how to make them, and even walks you through setting up WAMP so you can experiment on your local machine.
The templates only affect the styling of your site. If you are starting out, I would work on getting your content in place first and wait on templates until later on.
My experience has been revamping my two websites to use WordPress, then moving to ModX, then moving back to HTML. I believe that you don't need a template but it will make some things easier as it bundles a lot of stuff you'd otherwise have to do manually. --At least for WordPress. I'm not even sure we found a good ModX template but adapted [poorly] a WordPress one. ModX is a good but little known CMS.
With one of my sites I found that it was impossible for WordPress to handle the images, thus I began working with a plug-in developer to create a custom plug-in. He took about a year and it still wasn't useable. Also I hired some consultants along the way. Their biggest contribution was "to complexify things" so I couldn't make any changes myself without going back to them & paying hundreds of $ to change a phone # for example.
I chucked all that and redid everything in HTML5 with Javascript, css and a little php. People here on S.Overflow actually helped me with the coding. I have a 3rd simple site that I may go back to WordPress for but only to use some particular functions which might be a pain to program otherwise.
Here is one of my 2 HTML sites:
coinsandhistory.com