Brings LiveView from Phoenix framework into Django
Project description
Reactor, a LiveView library for Django
Reactor enables you to do something similar to Phoenix framework LiveView using Django Channels.
What's in the box?
This is no replacement for VueJS or ReactJS, or any JavaScript but it will allow you use all the potential of Django to create interactive front-ends. This method has its drawbacks because if connection is lost to the server the components in the front-end go busted until connection is re-established. But also has some advantages, as everything is server side rendered the interface comes already with meaningful information in the first request response, you can use all the power of Django template without limitations, if connection is lost or a component crashes, the front-end will have enough information to rebuild their state in the last good known state.
Installation and setup
Reactor requires Python >=3.6.
Setup up your django-channels project beforehand. You will need to set up Channel Layers as part of your configuration - Reactor won't work without Channel Layers enabled.
Install reactor:
pip install django-reactor
Add reactor
to your INSTALLED_APPS
. Register the URL patterns of reactor in your your file where is the ASGI application, usually <youproject>/asgi.py
, something like this:
# flake8: noqa
import os
os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'tourproject.settings')
import django
django.setup()
from channels.auth import AuthMiddlewareStack
from channels.routing import ProtocolTypeRouter, URLRouter
from reactor.urls import websocket_urlpatterns # <- for Django Reactor
import yourproject.urls # Pre load all components
application = ProtocolTypeRouter({
'websocket': AuthMiddlewareStack(URLRouter(
websocket_urlpatterns, # <- For Django Reactor
))
})
Reactor does not search your code base for components so you have to pre-load them. So this will be the file to import them from where ever they are so they are available to be rendered.
My personal philosophy is to have the components in the same files of the views where they are, this views are imported by urls.py.
In the templates where you want to use reactive components you have to load the reactor static files. So do something like this so the right JavaScript gets loaded:
{% load reactor %}
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
....
{% reactor_header %}
</head>
...
</html>
Don't worry if you put this as early as possible, the scripts are loaded using <script defer>
so they will be downloaded in parallel with the html, and then all is loaded they are executed.
Settings:
-
REACTOR_AUTO_BROADCAST
(default: False), when enabled will activate listeners for every time a model is created, modified or deleted, and will broadcast a message related to that modification that you can subscribe to and use to refresh your components in real-time. -
REACTOR_INCLUDE_TURBOLINKS
(default: False), when enabled will load Turbolinks as part of the reactor headers and the reactor redirects (Component.send_redirect
) will useTurbolinks.visit
. This also affects all the links in your application, check out the documentation of Turbolinks.
Back-end APIs
Template tags and filters of react
library
{% reactor_headers %}
: that includes the necessary JavaScript to make this library work. ~5Kb of minified JS, compressed with gz or brotli.{% component 'x-component-name' param1=1 param2=2 %}
: Renders a component by its name and passing whatever parameters you put there to theComponent.mount
method.tojson
: Takes something and renders it in JSON, theReactorJSONEncoder
extends theDjangoJSONEncoder
it serializes aModel
instance to itsid
and aQuerySet
as a list ofids
.tojson_safe
: Same astojson
but does not "HTML escapes" the output.then
: Use as a shorthand for if,{% if expression %}print-this{% endif %}
is equivalent to{{ expresssion|then:'print-this' }}
.ifnot
: Use a shorthand for if not,{% if not expression %}print-this{% endif %}
is equivalent to{{ expresssion|ifnot:'print-this' }}, and can be concatenated with then, like in:
{{ expression|then:'positive'|ifnot:'negative' }}`eq
: Compares its arguments and returns"yes"
or empty string,{{ this_thing|qe:other_other|then:'print-this' }}
.
reactor.component
module
Component
: This is the base component you should extend.AuthComponent
: ExtendsComponent
and ensures the user is logged in.broadcast(*names)
: Broadcasts the given names too all the system.on_commit(function)(*args, **kwargs)
: Callsfunction
with the given arguments after database commit.
Component API
template_name
: Set the name of the template of the component.extends
: Tag name HTML element the component extends.serialize
: Should returns a dictionary with the persistent state of the component (stored in the front-end) so when the components is connects to the back-end (or reconnects) that state can be recreated, By default serializes just theid
of the component, and theid
should always be serialized.mount(**kwargs)
: Loads the initial state of the component when is rendered from the back-end or it reconnects from the front-end (using the information created byserialize
), it is also called in case a subscription of the component is triggered.- subscribe(*names): Subscribes the current component to the given signal names, when one of those signals is broadcasted the component is refreshed, meaning that
mount
is called passing the resultserialize
and the component is re-rendered. send_redirect(url, *args, **kwargs )
: Resolves theurl
, and instructs the front-end to redirect to thaturl
, ifpush_state=False
, the redirect is done in hard HTML5pushState
is not used.send(_name, id=None, **kwargs)
: Sends a message with the name_name
to the component withid
, ifid
isNone
the message is sent to the current component.
AuthComponent API
This component ensures the user is logged in or redirects the user to the login screen; when using this component and overriding mount
make sure to call the support mount first.
mount(**kwargs)
: Same as before, but returnsTrue
if the user is logged in.user
: the current logged-in user.
Front-end APIs
reactor.push_state(url)
: pulls the next page from the backend with a get request, and applies it to the current page.reactor.send(element, event_name, args)
: send the eventevent_name
with theargs
parameters to the HTMLelement
. It what is used to forward user event to the back-end.
Special HTMLElement attributes
:override
: By default reactor does not update an input value if you have the focus on it, by adding this attribute to that input reactor will update it even if you have the focus on it.:once
: Reactor will render this element and children once, and never update it again.:focus
: Sets the focus on this element after an update'
Event binding in the front-end
Look at this:
<button @click.prevent="submit">Submit</button?>
The format is @<event>[.modifier][.modifier]="event_name[ {arg1: 1, arg2: '2'}]"
:
event
: is the name of the HTMLElement event:click
,blur
,change
,keypress
,keyup
,keydown
...modifier
: can be concatenated after the event name and represent actions or conditions to be met before the event execution. This is very similar as how VueJS does event binding:prevent
: callsevent.preventDefault();
stop
: calls (event.stopPropagation();
),enter
,ctrl
,alt
,space
, expects any of those keys to be press.inlinejs
: allows you to write your custom JavaScript in the event handler.debounce
: the bounces the event, it needs a name and the delay in milliseconds. Example:@keypress.100.search.debounce='message'
.
event_name
: is the name of the message to be send to this component- The arguments can be completely omitted, or specified as a dictionary.
When the arguments are omitted reactor serializes the form where the current element is or the current component if no form is found, and sends that as the arguments. The arguments will be always sent with the id
of the current component as a parameter.
JS Hooks
This are custom events triggered by reactor in different instants of the life cycle of the component.
@reactor-init
: Triggered on the root element when the element appears for first time in the DOM.@reactor-leave
: Triggered on the root element when the element had been removed from the DOM.
Serialization
Serialization of means to look at a chunk of HTML and extract the value of all elements with a name
attribute in it. Reactor serialization supports nesting:
Note on contenteditable
elements, if they hava a name attribute they are serialized taking their inner HTML, if they have the special attribute :as-text
, just their text is serialized.
Example 1
<input name="a" value="q">
<input name="b" value="x">
Result: {a: "q", b: "x"}
Example 2
<input name="query" value="q">
<input name="person.name" value="John">
<input name="person.age" value="99">
Result: {query: "q", person: {name: "John", value: "99"}}
Example 3
<input name="query" value="q">
<input name="persons[].name" value="a">
<input name="persons[].name" value="b">
Result: {query: "q", persons: [{name: "a"}, {name: "b"}]}
Event handlers in the back-end
Given:
<button @click="inc {amount: 2}">Increment</button?>
You will need an event handler in that component in the back-end:
def receive_inc(self, amount, **kwargs):
pass
Always prefix the method name with receice_
and add **kwargs
at the end because more data is always sent to the component, like the component's own id
.
Simple example of a counter
In your app create a template x-counter.html
:
{% load reactor %}
<div is="x-counter" id="{{ this.id }}" state="{{ this.serialize|tojson }}">
{{ this.amount }}
<button @click="inc">+</button>
<button @click="dec">-</button>
<button @click="set_to {amount: 0}">reset</button>
</div>
Anatomy of a template: each component should be a custom web component that inherits from HTMLElement. They should have an id
so the backend knows which instance is this one and a state
attribute with the necessary information to recreate the full state of the component on first render and in case of reconnection to the back-end.
Render things as usually, so you can use full Django template language, trans
, if
, for
and so on. Just keep in mind that the instance of the component is referred as this
.
Forwarding events to the back-end: Notice that for event binding in-line JavaScript is used on the event handler of the HTML elements. How this works? When the increment button receives a click event send(this, 'inc')
is called, send
is a reactor function that will look for the parent custom component and will dispatch to it the inc
message, or the set_to
message and its parameters {amount: 0}
. The custom element then will send this message to the back-end, where the state of the component will change and then will be re-rendered back to the front-end. In the front-end morphdom
(just like in Phoenix LiveView) is used to apply the new HTML.
Now let's write the behavior part of the component in views.py
:
from reactor import Component
class XCounter(Component):
amount = None
# reference the template from above
template_name = 'x-counter.html'
# A component is instantiated during normal rendering and when the component
# connects from the front-end. Then __init__ is called passing `context` of
# creation (in case of HTML rendering is the context of the template, in
# case of a WebSocket connection is the scope of django channels) Also the
# `id` is passed if any is provided, otherwise a `uuid4` is generated on
# the fly.
# This method is called after __init__ passing the initial state of the
# Component, this method is responsible taking the state of the component
# and construct or reconstruct the component. Sometimes loading things from
# the database like tests of this project.
def mount(self, amount=0, **kwargs):
self.amount = amount
# This method is used to capture the essence of the state of a component
# state, so it can be reconstructed at any given time on the future.
# By passing what ever is returned by this method to `mount`.
def serialize(self):
return dict(id=self.id, amount=self.amount)
# This are the event handlers they always start with `receive_`
def receive_inc(self, **kwargs):
self.amount += 1
def receive_dec(self, **kwargs):
self.amount -= 1
def receive_set_to(self, amount, **kwargs):
self.amount = amount
Let's now render this counter, expose a normal view that renders HTML, like:
def index(request):
return render(request, 'index.html')
And the index template being:
{% load reactor %}
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
....
{% reactor_header %}
</head>
<body>
{% component 'x-counter' %}
<!-- or passing an initial state -->
{% component 'x-counter' amount=100 %}
</body>
</html>
Don't forget to update your urls.py
to call the index view.
More complex components
I made a TODO list app using models that signals from the model to the respective channels to update the interface when something gets created, modified or deleted.
This example contains nested components and some more complex interactions than a simple counter, the app is in the /tests/
directory.
Development & Contribution
Clone the repo and create a virtualenv or any other contained environment, get inside the repo directory, build the development environment and the run tests.
git clone git@github.com:edelvalle/reactor.git
cd reactor
make install
make test
If you wanna run the inside Django project that is used for testing do:
make
cd tests
python manage.py runserver
Enjoy!
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