django-tablets

• tablets is a database templating layer for Django.
  • It works out of the box with regular Django templates, and requires only installing django-jinja to support Jinja2 templates.
• django-ace is used to provide a nice in-browser editing experience.

Note that tablets is frozen at Django <= 1.7.*, as Django 1.8's refactor of the template layer makes DB-and-J2 nature of this app completely unnecessary.

Preview

Installation

Install using pip:

pip install tablets

Add tablets and mptt to your INSTALLED_APPS setting:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'mptt',
    'tablets',
)

Add the tablets template loader to your TEMPLATE_LOADERS setting:

TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
    'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
    'tablets.loaders.DatabaseLoader',
)

Jinja2 Support

If you want to use Jinja2 templates, adjust the above config like so:

TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
    'django_jinja.loaders.AppLoader',
    'django_jinja.loaders.FileSystemLoader',
    'tablets.loaders.DatabaseLoader',
)

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'django_jinja',
    'tablets',
)

JINJA2_TEMPLATE_CLASS = "django_jinja.base.Template"
JINJA2_LOADER = "tablets.j2.loaders.Jinja2DatabaseOrFileLoader"
JINJA2_LOADER_SETTINGS = {
#    'should_prioritize_filesystem': False,
#    'should_reload_database_templates: True,
}

Tablets will by default check the database before the filesystem. To look for an existing file before checkint the database, change the value of should_prioritize_filesystem to True:

# Defaults to True
JINJA2_LOADER_SETTINGS = {
    'should_prioritize_filesystem': True,
}

Tablets reloads templates from the database each time. To turn off this functionality and only reload templates after an application reload, change the value of should_reload_database_templates to False:

# Defaults to True
JINJA2_LOADER_SETTINGS = {
    'should_reload_database_templates: False,
}

Django-Ace in the Admin

By default, tablets uses django-ace to use the great AceWidget for admin in-browser editing.

To disable or tweak these settings, adjust the following settings (default values shown):

USE_ACE_WIDGET = True
ACE_MODE = "twig"  # Provides syntax highlighting closest to Django/Jinja2 templates
ACE_THEME = "chrome"
ACE_WIDTH = "80%"  # Defaults to 100%
ACE_HEIGHT = "500px"  # Defaults to 350px

Usage

First, enter some templates into your Database.

parent = Template.objects.create(name="Site Base", content="""
    <h1>{% block hero %}Hello, World!{% endblock hero %}</h1>

   {% block body %}
       <p>This is a message from your friends at <code>Tablet</code>!</p>
   {% endblock body %}
""")
landing_page_template = Template.objects.create(
    name="Landing Page",
    parent=parent,
    content="""{% block body %}OVERRIDDEN FROM CHILD TEMPLATE!{% endblock body %}"""
)

# views.py
from django.views.generic.base import TemplateView

class MyView(TemplateView):
    # The ``tablet`` template loader will know how to find
    # this as if it were a file on disk like normal templates
    template_name = "Landing Page"

And that's it! When you hit a URL that registers to MyView, the contents of the "Landing Page" template will be rendered out of the database!