Installation and Setup

Your server needs to have Python 2.7 and Django 1.7.

Get it installed with:

$ pip install django-mathfield

Add 'mathfield' to your INSTALLED_APPS in your Django project’s settings.py.

Add a MathField to one of your models like this:

from django.db import models
import mathfield

class Lesson(models.Model):
    lesson_plan = mathfield.MathField()

Get live previews of the rendered LaTeX while you’re editing in the Django admin by adding MathFieldWidget as a widget when registering your model in admin.py:

from django.contrib import admin
from django import forms
from yourapp.models import Lesson
import mathfield

class LessonAdminForm(forms.ModelForm):

    class Meta:
        widgets = {
            'lesson_plan': mathfield.MathFieldWidget
        }


class LessonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    form = LessonAdminForm


admin.site.register(Lesson, LessonAdmin)

After adding some data to your database, you can output the rendered HTML to a template:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
    <head>
        {% load staticfiles %}
        <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
            href="{% static 'mathfield/css/mathfield.css' %}">
    </head>
    <body>
        <div>
            Raw text/LaTeX: {{ lesson.lesson_plan.raw }}
        </div>
        <div>
            Rendered HTML: {{ lesson.lesson_plan.html|safe }}
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

Make sure that you include the mathfield.css stylesheet in your template head, and include |safe with the MathField HTML value. This will give Django permission to render the text in that field as HTML. It is safe to do this provided that you only update the HTML using the form in the Django admin or the functions provided in the MathField API. Be very careful when updating the HTML yourself!

Developer API

You can modify MathField data and compile LaTeX on your server without the admin form if you would like. To be able to compile LaTeX serverside, you must have node.js (v0.10+) installed and it must be on your system path as an executable called node. Note that this is not necessary if you just use the admin form, as all compilation will occur in the browser in this case.

new_lesson = Lesson(lesson_plan='One half is $\\frac{1}{2}$.')
new_lesson.save()

import mathfield

# if you already know the HTML:
math_data = mathfield.store_math(raw_text, html)

# if you don't:
math_data = mathfield.store_math(raw_text)

new_lesson = Lesson(lesson_plan=math_data)
new_lesson.save()

lesson = Lesson.objects.get(id=0)
print lesson.lesson_plan['raw']
# One half is $\frac{1}{2}$

print lesson.lesson_plan['html']
# the html for your template...

import mathfield

html = mathfield.render_to_html('One half is $\\frac{1}{2}$.')