django-thumber 3.0.1

A Django app to solicit user feedback on various views/pages via a simple widget.

Django Thumber

Department of International Trade Django Thumber. A Django app to solicit user feedback on various views/pages via a simple widget.

Includes it’s own Javascript to handle showing/hiding parts of the form, and performing AJAX requests to the server, but also works when Javascript is disabled/unavailable in the client browser.

The user interaction is kept to a minimum, but captured as part of the feedback includes metadata about the user’s session, the timestamp of the feedback, the name of view that the feedback was given about, and the full url of the page.

Requirements

• Python >= 3.4

• Django >= 1.9

• jQuery >= 1.7

Quick start

1. Install the package:

   $ pip install django-thumber

2. Add “thumber” to your INSTALLED_APPS setting:

   INSTALLED_APPS = [
       ...
       'thumber',
   ]

3. Run python manage.py migrate to create the thumber models.

4. Run python manage.py collectstatic to pull in the static files for thumber.

5. Ensure your base template (or other template that the view extends) defines an ‘extra_js’ block, which is after the inclusion of jQuery:

   <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-x.y.z.min.js></script>
   ...
   {% block extra_js %}{% endblock %}
   ...

6. Mark your class-based view with the decorator provided by thumber:

   from thumber import thumber_feedback
   
   @thumber_feedback
   class MyView(...):
       ...

7. Ensure the template for your view (or another template that the view extends) defines a ‘thumber_feedback’ block where you want the widget to appear on the page:

   {% block thumber_feedback %}{% endblock %}

Getting Data Out

A default ModelAdmin is registered for you in the admin interface, so you can see the data that it produces easily. But you can create your own ModelAdmin if you prefer to specify more precisely how you want it to work. Something like:

from django.contrib import admin
from thumber.models import Feedback

@admin.register(Feedback)
class FeedbackAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    list_display = ['view_name', 'comment']
    ordering = ['created']

PLEASE NOTE - If you install the thumber app before the app where you attempt to register the Feedback model to the admin site, you will need to unregister it first:

admin.site.unregister(Feedback)
admin.site.register(Feedback, FeedbackAdmin)

If you install the thumber app after your app, then the thumber will only attempt to register the Feedback model, if it is not already registered.

And of course you can always just inspect the models directly in code or the django shell:

from thumber.models import Feedback
Feedback.objects.all()
...

There is one simple shortcut which is a common use case, to see the average feedback for each view in your applcation. To get aggregate data for every view, there is a shortcut on the model manager of the ContentFeedbcak model:

from thumber.models import Feedback
Feedback.objects.average_for_views()
[ ... ]

Or it can be performed on queryset too, meaning you can prefilter (e.g. to date ranges) before aggregating:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from thumber.models import Feedback

# Get data only for the past week
Feedback.objects.filter(created__gt=datetime.now() - timedelta(days=7)).average_for_views()
[ ... ]

Further configuration

You can add properties to you view class to modify various properties of the widget, shown below are the default values, just set the replacements as needed on your view class:

@thumber_feedback
class MyView(...):
    satisfied_wording = "Was this service useful?"  # The initial question presented to the user
    yes_wording = "Yes, thanks"                     # The positive radio option wording
    no_wording = "Not really"                       # The negative radio option wording
    comment_wording = ""                            # The label wording for the comment textarea
    comment_placeholder = "Please tell us why?"     # The placeholder text for the comment textares
    submit_wording = "Send my feedback"             # The text on the submit button
    thanks_message = "Thank you for your feedback"  # The success/thank you message wording
    error_message = "Sorry, something went wrong"   # The failure message
    first_option_yes = True                         # Whether "Yes, thanks" appears as the first radio option

Any of the above properties can also be added as methods with the prefix get_, and such methods will take preference over a variable:

@thumber_feedback
class MyView(...):

    def get_satisfied_wording(self):
        return "Did you find this page about {0} useful?".format(self.page_description)

You can hook into the success and error processing of the thumber to perform custom actions when sending feedback. To do so, after the extra_js block in your template, there will be a thumber Javascript variable available. You can set custom handlers like so:

thumber.setSuccessHandler(alert('Yay!'));
thumber.setErrorHandler(alert('Boo!'));

You can override the template used to render the widget, by creating your own template. This must be named feedback.html, and be in a ‘thumber’ directory within your templates.

Further, the template can be overridden on a project, app, or view level, based upon where the template is located. In order of preference, thumber will look for templates in the following locations:

thumber/YOUR_APP/YOUR_VIEW_NAME/feedback.html  # Override for the specific YOUR_VIEW_NAME view
thumber/YOUR_APP/feedback.html                 # Override for all views in YOUR_APP
thumber/feedback.html                          # Override for all views in all apps of your project

Some guidance on how to write a custom feedback.html template is below

Overriding in feedback.html

If you create a custom feedback.html template you have a number of blocks you can override, some give more flexibility, but come with extra reponsibility to ensure you perform certain work yourself.

Blocks to override, and some simlpe guidance for each are as follows:

• thumber_form_class

  • Add addtional class/classes to the thumber form

• before_thumber_form and after_thumber_form

  • The blocks are directly either side of the <form></form> tags

  • Use to wrap the form with html if necesssary

• thumber_form_widgets

  • This replaces just the widgets inside the form, including the submit button, these must be replaced

  • A variable of thumber_form is available which you can use to render the controls

  • If you do not use the thumber_form, the minimum needed data in the post is:

    • satisfied, as a radio button with values “True” or “False”

    • comment, as textarea

    • thumber_token (hidden input), as “sync” for non-Javascript posts, or “ajax” for Javascript posts

    • All inputs require an id

  • The form tag, including csrf token are handled, and do not need including

• thumber_form

  • This replaces the entire form, so it will need redefining

  • The form must have a ‘thumber-form’ class for the ajax code to work

  • The form’s action must be the url of the view that is decorated with @thumber_view

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please follow the guidelines below to make life easier:

• Fork the repo, branch off release, make changes, then make a pull request (PR) to release on the main repo

• Include tests for bug fixes or new features

• Include documentation for any new features

• Please limit changes for a PR to a single feature, or a single bugfix

  • Make multiple PRs for multiple discrete changes

• Please squash commits - ideally a single commit, but at least to a sensible minimum

  • If a PR reasonably should have multiple commits, consider if it should actually be separate PRs

License

MIT licensed. See the bundled LICENSE file for more details.