Im still fairly new to Django, so please explain things with that in
mind.
I'm trying to create three websites using 2 subdomains and 1 domain:
for the blog, blog.mysite.com
for the forums, forums.mysite.com
for the custom web app, mysite.com
When building the custom web app, I used contrib.auth to make use of
the built-in django provided user models and functionality.
For the forums, I am planning on using SNAPboard (http://
code.google.com/p/snapboard/) with minimal, if any, modifications. On
initial inspection, it looks like it also uses contrib.auth users.
For the blog, I will probably be rolling my own lightweight blogging
app (since that seems to be the Django way and, also, b/c as Bennet
mentions, there is no killer Django Blog app)
Currently, I am considering two features that require some integration
between the three sites. First, I want to have the users of the custom
web app to use the same account to also log into the forums. Second, I
also (but I haven't figured out how I'm going to do this yet) would
like my blog posts to automatically become a topic for discussion in
the forums (this is just an idea I had, I might end up dropping it).
Ok, so to my questions:
1) Again, I'm new to Django, but this integration leads me to believe
the three websites need to be all under one project. Is this correct?
2) How would I accomplish the url structure for the websites that I
described above (blog.mysite.com, etc)? In the project's urls.py, I
don't know how to filter off of subdomains. If it was mysite.com/
forums/, that would be easy, but I don't know how to to catch
forums.mysite.com and forward it to the appropriate Django app.
3) Would I have to make use of the django.contrib.sites framework? I
don't understand that framework fully, but it seems like it's used
when two different websites are using the same django app in the
background. Whereas my three websites are all using different django
apps, but I want them to share a little bit of data.
Thanks for your help.
1) Yes, it's only true way for that
2) Use middleware
3) No, you don't need it.
Related
It's been a while since I last used Django for a project and there have been some really great advances in the core project and the ecosystem around it.
One of those is the mature API development libraries like django-rest-framework.
So far I'm loving it. But it seems that all the guides I've found are disabling the Django Admin when using Django Rest Framework.
The reasons I've seen given were essentially "We don't need it for anything" or "We aren't using sessions, which Admin uses, so it won't work, so we're not using it."
"Don't need it" is a valid reason.
But other than that, are there reasons that it's bad practice to keep the Django Admin enabled when the project is primarily used as an API?
For my purposes, I find it convenient to manage user permissions and as a simple way to code admin only functions for dealing with the underlying data.
note: I've considered whether this question is designed to elicit opinions, which is not appropriate on SO. I believe that the answers I'm asking for will be technical or security based reasons with fact or experience based reasoning.
Totally agree.
On my current project, users are getting and setting ALL data via django-rest-framework.
Like you, I find the admin site convenient to manage user permissions, permissions groups, writing emails, sms, mobile applications push and more.
More, all these models are being translated, and translation is set in THE ADMIN SITE !!!
So, if we need a new object with translation, we do not need a new app release (example in pic of a question).
objects translations are readable and clear.
Data is organized nicely with minimal effort.
Admin get cool skins (jet / grappelli etc etc)
Language activation works like a charm in the APIViews.
I've developing in django for the past few months and I find it extremely great.
My next project is a price-comparing site for local businesses - where each user can add business and comment on each.
The admin of the site won't be a programmer, but with basic knowledge in web and python.
Should I stick to the old familiar django or should I try it out?
Thanks :)
Matan.
django CMS is built on top of Django and meant to be integrated into existing Django applications or extended with new ones. So your question is flawed.
So instead ask yourself if you need CMS functionality (pages managed by your admins). It sounds like your main app (the compare bit) is better handled by a Django application, but maybe you want the site admin to be able to easily edit the About Us page etc, this is where django CMS could come in handy.
I would like to have one users system (preferrably Django's) to rule both Django and Wordpress.
The use case is that Django is an application embedded inside a wordpress installation (via iframe or something similar). In order to use the Django, users must be authenticated, authentication in WordPress is not mandatory, but recommended (for posting comments and stuff like that).
In order to ease the usage of the site, I would like the same sign-up to apply for both the Django app and the WordPress installation. Sign-up might occur either via OAuth / FB authentication (lots of Django solutions for this), or via dedicated site users. While the signup process is most important, it would be nice if certain user fields would remain synced between the two worlds.
My thoughts on the matter:
Maybe there's an out-of-the-box solution (couldn't find any)
Create a full-fledged django app for syncing the two user models (wp_users and django's users) via one of the following options:
A master(django)-slave(wp) solution, where each change in Django changes info in the wp_users and other related tables and vice-versa (via Django periodically checking the DB or creating a WP plugin). Can be implemented either by putting both django and wp on the same (MySQL) db, using XML-RPC or some other anomination I didn't think of.
Same as above, but let WP be the master instead of Django (seems harder).
An external system to rule both models - maybe make OAuth / some other external authentication mandatory, and somehow sync the two models using this?
Has anyone encountered this situation before?
Any suggestions will be appreciated.
You should really try to work out some approach, revising your work when encountering problems afterwards.
Nevertheless imo Wordpress is kind of bordered. I wouldn't recommend making changes to both frameworks, but fixate on Django.
For example you could create a WordpressUser(User) and create a python script a crobjob, celery task or whatever you'll need to syncronize your databases. Meaning to say you should keep things strictly separated unless you have very good reasons not to (I can't think of any).
I created a database for a site i'm doing using Django as the admin backend. However because the server where the site is hosted on, won't be able to support Python, I find myself needing to do the front end in PHP and as such i've decided to use CodeIgniter along with Datamapper to map the models/relationship.
However DataMapper requires the tables to be in a specific format for it to work, and Django maps its tables differently, using the App name as the prefix in the table. I've tried using the prefix & join_prefix vars in datamapper but still doesn't map them correctly.
Has anyone used a combination of this? and if so how have the fixed the issue of db table names being inconsistent? Is there anything out there that i can use to make them work together?
----edit: clarification on backend---
Let me clarify: i'm going to be running the admin from a subdomain pointing to a python ready server. However i can't move the main domain name from the php only webserver because of certain constraints/binding contracts the company got itself in. and don't want to use cloaking/masking because of seo purposes.
i'm using the django admin because i'm using some packages to make a pretty/functional admin, such as grappelli for the admin template, along with its editor for editing news stories, etc. also using photologue to manage photos/galleries. etc.
If your problem is simply making Django use the same tables as your other software, use the db_column and db_table parameters in the models.
http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/models/custom_columns/
Two apparent solutions:
Instead of hacking one or both to work well with each other, emulate the Django admin in PHP/CodeIgniter code. **
Get a server that supports Django. Make the frontend in Django.
Time-wise, either one of those solutions will be less involving than trying to make two different frameworks using different programming languages mesh well together. I can't imagine the future maintenance required to ensure everlasting compatibility and interoperability.
Also, I assume by saying:
I created a database for a site i'm doing using Django as the admin backend
You really mean that you modeled your apps using Django, and that you also intend on administrating the database that has resulted from this modeling in the Django admin. (In which case you already have your Models layer complete and should just try building the rest of the site in Django)
If that's the case then in your models you are going to need to define the exact column names (db_column) that DataMapper will expect, as well as manually define the table names (db_table), including M2M tables.
You may also have to define all of your primary keys manually, if DM expects something named differently.
Also:
If the server can't support Python, where are you going to be running your backend? Different server? Locally? This plan just isn't making a lot of sense.
** I would not suggest trying this. I had been attempting to make a CI backend that actually shared much of the same ideas as Django's admin, before I knew about Django's admin. And of course once discovering Django, I dropped the CI work immediately and continued on with what I have found to be a much more amazing framework that is much faster to develop on.
So as I understand you plan on using Django just because of django-admin, and you are trying to use CI for the actual site because the server runs PHP, right?
So why don't you use framework that generates something like Django's admin but that you can run on your server?
The Symfony Framework has a really nice admin generator, in the spirit of Django's and you might be able to run it on your server. This would save you from the maintainance nightmare that might come later as #jonwd7 answered
I am almost done developing a Django project (with a few pluggable apps).
I want to offer this project as a SaaS (something like basecamp).
i.e: project1.mysaas.com , project2.mysaas.com etc
I seek your expertise in showing me the path.
Ways I have thought of are:
1 use Sites to define site specific settings.py
2 a middleware to detect request then set settings accordingly
3 create Django project (taking in pluggable apps) for each site
Thanks.
btw, i am a total newbie.
Your requirements aren't at all clear but I'll assume you aren't doing anything tricky and also assume your "project1", "project2" are customer names which won't need any special branding.
First, about your ideas:
You probably won't need to use the sites framework unless each site is branded differently. The site framework works well doing what it was designed to do, which is present different views of a common set of data.
This would work but probably is not the best approach IMO.
This is unmanageable.
Now, this is a really hard topic because there are so many issues. A decent place to start reading is the High Scalability Blog and especially relevant for you would be the post on 37signals Architecture.
Finally, here's what I am doing in a small SaaS app (that doesn't need extreme scalability):
Use the sites framework (because user pages will be branded by the partner/reseller and each partner has a unique login page)
Use mod_wsgi to minimize resource usage from all the Django instances.
Instead of middleware I put a common code at the top of every view that identifies the company of the user. I need this for logic in the views which is why I don't think it's useful in middleware.