django-notify 1.1.0

A Django application which provides temporary notifications.

=============
Django Notify
=============

A Django application which provides temporary notifications.

Notification messages persist until a request retrieves them.


Installation
============

Add the middleware to your ``MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES`` setting (the default
temporary storage relies on Django's ``contrib.sessions`` application, so place
this after ``SessionMiddleware``)::

'django_notify.middleware.NotificationsMiddleware',

To make it easy to access notifications in templates, add the context processor
into your ``TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS`` setting::

'django_notify.context_processors.notifications',


Usage
=====

Adding a notification message
-----------------------------

The middleware attaches an instance of a temporary storage class called
``notifications`` to your ``request``. To add a notification, call::

request.notifications.add('Hello world.')

Some other methods provide a standard way to add notifications with commonly
used tags (which are usually represented as HTML classes for the message)::

request.notifications.debug('%s SQL statements were executed.' % count)
request.notifications.success('Profile details updated.')
request.notifications.warning('Your account expires in three days.')
request.notifications.error('Document deleted.')


Displaying notification messages
--------------------------------

In your template, use something like::

{% if notifications %}
<ul class="messages">
{% for message in notifications %}
<li{% if message.tags %} class="{{ message.tags }}"{% endif %}>{{ message }}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
{% endif %}

If you're using the context processor, your template should be rendered with a
``RequestContext``. Otherwise, ensure ``request.notifications`` is available to
the template context.


Expiration of notification messages
-----------------------------------

The notifications are marked to be cleared when the storage instance is
iterated (and cleared when the response is processed).

To avoid the notifications being cleared, you can set
``request.notifications.used = False`` after iterating.


Notification Levels
-------------------

The ``NOTIFICATIONS_LEVEL`` setting can be used to change the minimum recorded
level. Attempts to add notifications of a level less than this will be ignored.

The built-in levels (which can be imported from ``django_notify`` directly)
are::

======== ===== ===========
Constant Level Default Tag
======== ===== ===========
DEBUG 10 'debug'
INFO 20 ''
SUCCESS 25 'success'
WARNING 30 'warning'
ERROR 40 'error'
======== ===== ===========

``INFO`` is the default minimum recorded level. It is also the
default level of the ``add`` method.

The minimum recorded level can also be set per request by changing the
``level`` attribute of the notifications storage instance::

import django_notify

# Change the notifications level to ensure the debug message is added.
request.notifications.level = django_notify.DEBUG
request.notifications.debug('Test notification...')

# Set the notifications level back to default.
request.notifications.level = None


Custom Tags
-----------

To provide custom tags for notification levels (either built in levels or
custom ones), set the ``NOTIFICATIONS_TAGS`` setting to a dictionary
containing the levels you wish to change. As this extends the default tags,
you only need to provide tags for the levels you wish to override::

import django_notify
NOTIFICATIONS_TAGS = {
django_notify.INFO: 'info',
50: 'critical',
}

For more direct control over message tags, you can optionally provide a string
containing extra tags to any of the add methods::

request.notifications.add('Over 9000!', extra_tags='dragonball')
request.notifications.error('Email box full', extra_tags='email')

Extra tags are added before any default tag for that level (space separated).


Temporary Storage Backends
==========================

Django notify can use different backends to store temporary messages. To change
which backend is being used, add a ``NOTIFICATIONS_STORAGE`` to your settings,
referencing to the module and class of the storage class. For example::

NOTIFICATIONS_STORAGE = 'cookie.CookieStorage'

Django Notify first looks for the module inside of ``django_notify.storage``,
and if not found, tries to import the full given module directly.

Three temporary storage classes are included in Django Notify:

``'session.SessionStorage'``
This class stores all messages inside of the request's session. It
requires Django's ``contrib.session`` application.

``'cookie.CookieStorage'``
This class stores the notification data in a cookie (signed with a secret
hash to prevent manipulation) to persist notifications across requests.
Old messages are dropped if the cookie data size would exceed 4096 bytes.

``'fallback.FallbackStorage'``
This is the default temporary storage class.

This class uses CookieStorage for all notification messages, falling back
to using SessionStorage for the messages which could not fit in a single
cookie.

Since it is uses SessionStorage, it also requires Django's
``contrib.session`` application.

To write your own, subclass the ``BaseStorage`` class in
``django_notify.storage.base`` and write ``_get`` and ``_store`` methods.