djangocms-cascade 0.9.3

Collection of plugins for DjangoCMS >3.0 to add various HTML elements from CSS frameworks to any CMS placeholder

DjangoCMS-Cascade is the Swiss army knife for working with Django CMS plugins.

Documentation

Find detailed documentation on ReadTheDocs.

Please see the Release Notes before upgrading from an older version.

Why Use DjangoCMS-Cascade?

Add DOM elements to a Django-CMS placeholder

DjangoCMS-Cascade is a collection of plugins for DjangoCMS >= 3.1 to add various HTML elements to any CMS placeholder in a hierarchical tree.

It allows web editors to layout their pages, without having to edit Django templates. In most cases, one template with one single placeholder is enough. The editor then can subdivide that placeholder into rows and columns, and add additional elements such as buttons, rulers, and much more.

Currently about a dozen components from Bootstrap-3.x are available, but Cascade makes it very easy to add additional components, often with less than 20 lines of Python code and without any database migrations.

Since all plugins share the same database table, it is very easy to build inheritance trees. For instance, Cascade’s own LinkPlugin inherits from a LinkPluginBase, which also is the parent of the ImagePlugin and the ButtonPlugin. This helps to share the common functionality required for linking.

It’s pluggable

DjangoCMS-Cascade is very modular, keeping its CMS modules in functional groups. These groups have to be activated independently in your settings.py. It also is possible to activate only certain Plugins out of a group. One such group is cmsplugin_cascade.bootstrap3, but it could be replaced by a future Bootstrap-4, the Foundation, YUI or whatever other CSS framework you prefer.

Configurable individually

Each Cascade Plugin can be styled individually. The site-administrator can specify which CSS styles and CSS classes can be added to each plugin. Then the page-editor can pick one of the allowed styles to adopt his elements accordingly.

Reuse your data

Each Cascade Plugin can be configured by the site-administrator to share some or all of its data fields. This for instance is handy, to keep references onto external URLs in a central place. Or is can be used to resize all images sharing a cetrain property in one go.

Segment the DOM

It is even possible to group plugins into seperate evaluation contexts. This for instance is used to render different Plugins, depending on whether a user is authenticated or anonymous.

Responsive Images

In modern web development, images must adopt to the column width in which they are rendered. Therefore the <img ...> tag, in addition to the well known src attribute, also accepts additional srcset’s, one for each media query. DjangoCMS-Cascade calculates the required widths for each image, depending on the current column layout considering all media breakpoints.

Features

• Use the scaffolding technique from the preferred CSS framework to subdivide a placeholder into a grid system.

• Make full usage of responsive techniques, by allowing stacked to horizontal classes per element.

• Use styled buttons to add links.

• Wrap special content into a Jumbotron or a Carousel.

• Add <img> and <picture> elements in a responsive way, so that more than one image URL point onto the resized sources, one for each viewport using the srcset tags or the <source> elements.

• Use segmentation to conditionally render parts of the DOM.

• It is very easy to integrate additional elements from the preferred CSS framework. For instance, implementing the Bootstrap Carousel, required only 50 lines of Python code and two simple Django templates.

• Since all the data is stored in JSON, no database migration is required if a field is added, modified or removed from the plugin.

• Currently Bootstrap-3.x is supported, but other CSS frameworks can be easily added in a pluggable manner.

• It follows the “batteries included” philosophy, but still remains very modular.

In addition to easily implement any kind of plugin, DjangoCMS-Cascade makes it possible to add reusable helpers. Such a helper enriches a plugin with an additional, configurable functionality:

• By making some of the plugin fields sharable, one can reuse these values for other plugins of the same kind. This for instance is handy for the image and picture plugin, so that images always are resized to predefined values.

• By allowing extra fields, one can add an optional id tag, CSS classes and inline styles. This is configurable on a plugin and site base.

• It is easily possible to customize the templates shipped with the plugins.

Help needed

If you like this project, please invest some time and test it with Django-1.8/1.9 and Python-3.4.

If you are a native English speaker, please check the documentation for spelling mistakes and grammar since English not my mother tongue.

History

This project started as a simple wrapper for the DjangoCMS TextPlugin, so that text elements could be shifted horizontally using the Grid System 960. Later on, support for 960.gs was dropped in favor of Twitter Bootstrap. Now the aim of the project is to fully support all Bootstrap components and more, so that djangoCMS can be used to build a website with as many widgets as possible, without having to edit templates.

DjangoCMS starting with version 3.0, allows to nest plugins inside other plugins. This feature made it possible to implement this kind of plugin.