Django Mezzanine - Don't Overwrite Local Files with collecttemplates - django

I'm trying to copy over the mezzanine core files to my project using the following:
python manage.py collecttemplates
but every time that I run this is overwrites my local changes to files such as base.html. How can I run this but choose for it to only add missing files, not overwrite updated ones?

The command doesn't currently support this behaviour, but it's a great idea - I've just opened an issue for it here: https://github.com/stephenmcd/mezzanine/issues/1319
Meanwhile, to state the obvious workaround:
Copy your project's templates directory to an external temporary directory
Run collecttemplates
Copy the external temporary directory back to your project's templates directory

Related

Pycharm Can not find the reference to external javascript and css files

I am not able to locate my external javascript and css files when I ctrl click their path string.
My html template path is 'bodhitree-flipped/concept/templates/concept/content_developer.html'. And my external video.js file path is 'bodhitree-flipped/video/static/video-js/video.js'.
Any Idea how I make pycharm to locate my js files? I know the solution for this is to run python manage.py collectstatic command which will copy all my asset files to /staticfiles folder but I don't want to do it as it will increase the size of my project by duplicating all the static files.
I tried rebuiding the file index with option under File->invalidate caches/Restart... but unfortunately this also doesn't work.
This is how my project structure look like.
click on the file to see code in settings.py
Any help is deeply appreciated.
I have just changed the python template language from jinja to Django (settings->languages and framework->python template languages)and then invalidated the file cache. It worked.

How to package an OpenStack Horizon Dashboard plugin correctly?

I am packaging a Horizon Plugin. I have a bunch of templates, a view, as well as css, js files, and images.
Everything should be contained so that the package is either a .deb or a tarball. So right now I keep all files in /opt/stack/horizon/openstack_dashboard/dashboards/<my-dashboard-name>.
My question is, how do I include js and css files properly? There is /opt/stack/horizon/openstack_dashboard/settings.py file that specifies HORIZON_CONFIG.js_files, however it is always empty! I put a list of files there, it still comes out as empty in the templates. So the question is, how do I include js and css files in a Horizon dashboard plugin, for the purpose of packaging it in either a single tarball or a .deb package?
You should store static files below <my-dashboard-name>/static. It's best to namespace your static files, I use the following directory structure:
<my-dashboard-name>/static/<my-dashboard-name>/js and so on for css and img then I reference the files in the HTML templates with /static/<my-dashboard-name>/js/jsfile.js, that way you won't get any name collisions.
When someone uses your plugin they extract your dashboard and register it in the right places and then additionally they have to run the collectstatic django management command from the base openstack_dashboard directory (in your case /opt/stack/horizon/), either:
$ ./run_tests.sh -m collectstatic
or
$ ./manage.py collectstatic
That should copy your static files to the right places according to how the site has been configured.

In Django (v1.6.5), what's the best practice for location of Templates, Static files?

I am severely confused about where to put my templates files and static files.
I understand absolute and relative paths just fine, but I can't seem to find any instructions that mirror the installation I have. I know this resembles other questions, but those answers aren't working. The video I watched to successfully build a simple app didn't put templates in the Project folder, which is where logic tells me they should be.
I have Python at:
C:\Python27
Django (v1.6.5) at:
C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\django
I created a project "mysite" and an app called "films."
Project "mysite":
C:\Python27\Scripts\venv\mysite
and an App "films":
C:\Python27\Scripts\venv\mysite\films
The video I watched had me put my templates at:
C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\django\contrib\admin\templates
But this seems completely stupid because the templates are outside of both the Project and the App.
Shouldn't I put a templates folder in the Project folder:
C:\Python27\Scripts\venv\mysite\templates
And then create subdirectories using the App name?
What files do I need to edit (and how) to tell Django where to find them?
Follow a similar process for static files (css, images)?
Like all frameworks, django offers great benefits if you follow some guidelines (and give up some control). The trick is to know what these guidelines are.
For templates:
If the template is not tied to a particular application, put it in a templates directory at the root of your project. Add the full path to this directory to TEMPLATE_DIRS.
All other templates should go in a directory called templates inside your application directory. So if you application is called myapp, templates for myapp will go in myapp/templates/
For static files:
For files related to specific applications, inside your application directory create a directory called static, then inside it a directory with the name of your application. So, if your application is called myapp, you would have myapp/static/myapp. Place all your static content for this application here; for example myapp/static/myapp/js/funky.js.
For static files that are generic, create a directory called assets (or static) in the root directory of your project. Add the full path to this directory to STATICFILES_DIRS.
By default, django will search all applications listed in INSTALLED_APPS, and add any templates and static directories to its search path for files. This is how, by default, the admin works without you having to configure anything.
If you chose to place your templates and static files in some other location, only then do you need to modify the TEMPLATE_DIRS and STATICFILES_DIRS settings. If all your templates and static assets are tied to applications, just creating the directories as mentioned above makes everything work.
If you are wondering why you need to create another directory under myapp/static/ to store your static files, this is more for portability. The collectstatic command is a simply "copy and replace" utility. It will overwrite all files in the STATIC_DIR location. This means that if two applications have some static file with the same name, they will be overwritten without warning. Adding a subdirectory keeps your application's static assets from being overwritten, because the exact path will be created.
Suppose you have two applications, app1 and app2, and both have a file named style.css in their respected directories:
app1/static/css/style.css
app2/static/css/style.css
When you run collectstatic, you'll end up with the following (assuming static is the name of your STATIC_DIR setting):
static/css/style.css
This may be the style.css from app1 or app2, the other cannot be determined (its actually based on the INSTALLED_APPS order). To prevent this, if you have:
app1/static/app1/css/style.css
app2/static/app2/css/style.css
Now, you'll end up with:
static/app1/css/style.css
static/app2/css/style.css
Both files will be preserved.
You also shouldn't put your code in your virtual environment directory. The virtual environment is not part of your source code, and placing your project in the same directory may cause problems later.
Create a single directory for your environments - I call mine envs (creative, I know). Create all your environments in this directory. Once you activate the environment, you can work in any directory in your system and your shell will be configured for that environment's Python.
Finally for the best, accurate, most up-to-date information - always refer to the django manual and the tutorial. Almost all other resources (even the often suggested djangobook.com) are outdated.

Overwriting folders with git

I'm learning how to use django on a EC2 server, but i am editing the code on my local computer. When i run things like :
python manage.py startapp polls
It creates a folder with various files inside. Instead of individually adding the files to git, which leaves the possibility of me forgetting to add every newly created file, is it good practice just to:
git add (the root django project directory)
everytime django creates new files?
If this isn't good practice, what methods do you guys use to ensure that all files get added to git everytime new files are created?
I think you're over-thinking this. Ignore files you think you should (like *.pyc). Add all the files or do them individually, whichever you prefer. If you accidentally added one you shouldn't have, do a checkout of that file so that you don't add it. If you already committed with a file, git delete the file and commit.
You use git status, it will give you the list of all the files it's currently not tracking, so you can use that as a reference if you're afraid you'll forget something.
Additionally, I would say that you don't want to forget to properly setup your .gitignore, and then you can instruct git to add everything, otherwise, like Mark suggested, you would potentially be adding **.pyc* files, which you don't want to do.

What should my LESS #import path be?

Here's the scenario:
I'm running Django 1.3.1, utilizing staticfiles, and django-compressor (latest stable) to, among other things, compile LESS files.
I have an "assets" directory that's hooked into staticfiles with STATICFILES_DIRS (for project-wide static resources). In that directory I have a "css" directory and in that a "lib.less" file that contains LESS variables and mixins.
So the physical path is <project_root>/assets/css/lib.less and it's served at /static/css/lib.less.
In one of my apps' static directory, I have another LESS file that needs to import the one above. The physical path for that is <project_root>/myapp/static/myapp/css/file.less and it would be served at /static/myapp/css/file.less.
My first thought was:
#import "../../css/lib.less"
(i.e. based on the URL, go up to levels from /static/myapp/css to /static/, then traverse down into /static/css/lib.less).
However, that doesn't work, and I've tried just about every combination of URLs and physical paths I can think of and all of them give me FilterErrors in the template, resulting from not being able to find the file to import.
Anyone have any ideas what the actual import path should be?
After tracking down exactly where the error was coming from in the django-compressor source. It turns out to be directly passed from the shell. Which clued me into removing all the variables and literally just trying to get the lessc compiler to parse the file.
Turns out it wants a relative path from the source file to the file to be imported in terms of the physical filesystem path. So I had to back all the way out to my <project_root> and then reference assets/css/lib.less from there. The actual import that finally worked was:
#import "../../../../assets/css/lib.less"
What's very odd though is that lessc would not accept an absolute filesystem path (i.e. /path/to/project/assets/css/lib.less). I'm not sure why.
UPDATE (02/08/2012)
Had a complete "DUH" moment when I finally pushed my code to my staging environment and ran collectstatic. The #import path I was using worked fine in development because that was the physical path to the file then, but once collectstatic has done it's thing, everything is moved around and relative to <project_root>/static/.
I toyed with the idea of using symbolic links to try to match up the pre and post-collectstatic #import paths, but I decided that that was far too complicated and fragile in the long run.
SO... I broke down and moved all the LESS files together under <project_root>/assets/css/, and rationalized moving the LESS files out of the apps because since they're tied to a project-level file in order to function, they're inherently project-level themselves.
I'm sort of in the same bind and this is what I've come up with for the most recent versions of compressor and lessc to integrate with staticfiles. Hopefully this will help some other people out
As far as I can tell from experimenting, lessc doesn't have a notion of absolute or relative paths. Rather, it seems to maintain a search path, which includes the current directory, the containing directory of the less file, and whatever you pass to it via --include-path
so in my configuration for compressor I put
COMPRESS_PRECOMPILERS = (
('text/less', 'lessc --include-path=%s {infile} {outfile}' % STATIC_ROOT),
)
Say, after running collectstatic I have bootstrap living at
STATIC_ROOT/bootstrap/3.2.0/bootstrap.css.
Then from any less file, I can now write
#import (less, reference) "/bootstrap/3.2.0/bootstrap.css"
which allows me to use the bootstrap classes as less mixins in any of my less files!
Every time I update a less file, I have to run collectstatic to aggregate them in a local directory so that compressor can give less the right source files to work on. Otherwise, compressor handles everything smoothly. You can also use collectstatic -l to symlink, which means you only need to collect the files when you add a new one.
I'm considering implementing a management command to smooth out the development process that either subclasses runserver to call collectstatic each time the server is reloaded, or uses django.utils.autoreload directly to call collectstatic when things are updated.
Edit (2014/12/01): My approach as outlined above requires a local static root. I was using remote storage with offline compression in my production environment, so deployment requires a couple extra steps. In addition to calling collectstatic to sync the static files to the remote storage, I call collectstatic with different django config file that uses local storage. After I have collected the files locally, I can call 'compress', having configured it to upload the result files to remote storage, but look in local storage for source files.