djangocms-spa 0.1.28

Run your django CMS project as a single-page application (SPA)

Run your django CMS project as a single-page application (SPA). This package provides a REST-API that returns all page contents serialized as JSON. A couple of helpers and base classes can be used to create API endpoints for custom views. djangocms-spa was build to use it together with a concrete implementation:

• djangocms-spa-vue-js

Quickstart

Install djangocms_spa:

pip install djangocms-spa

Add it to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'djangocms_spa',
    ...
)

Add the Locale middleware (if it isn’t already):

MIDDLEWARE = (
...
'django.middleware.locale.LocaleMiddleware',
)

Set your default template:

DJANGOCMS_SPA_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE = 'pages/content.html'

The settings variable DJANGOCMS_SPA_TEMPLATES expects a dictionary of templates. It should cover all templates of CMS_TEMPLATES and use the path as key. The frontend component name and a list of partials (e.g. static placeholders) are valid options.

DJANGOCMS_SPA_TEMPLATES = {
    'pages/content.html': {
        'frontend_component_name': 'content',
        'partials': ['menu', 'meta', 'footer']
    },
    'pages/content_with_section_navigation.html': {
        'frontend_component_name': 'content-with-section-navigation',
        'partials': ['menu', 'meta', 'footer']
    },
}

Configure your custom partials:

DJANGOCMS_SPA_PARTIAL_CALLBACKS = {
    'menu': 'djangocms_spa.partial_callbacks.get_cms_menu_data_dict'
}

Render the initial app version (commit hash) in the template so your client can check it:

{% load app_version_tags %}
{% app_version %}

Plugins

Your plugins don’t need a rendering template but a render_spa method that returns a dictionary. To have a clean structure, we usually put the context inside a content key of the dictionary:

class TextPlugin(JsonOnlyPluginBase):
    name = _('Text')
    model = TextPluginModel
    frontend_component_name = 'cmp-text'
    def render_spa(self, request, context, instance):
        context = super(TextPlugin, self).render_spa(request, context, instance)
        context['content']['text']. = instance.text
        return context

plugin_pool.register_plugin(TextPlugin)

Settings

CACHE_TIMEOUT (default: 60 * 10)

If you are using a caching backend, the API responses are cached.

DJANGOCMS_SPA_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE (default: 'index.html')

DEFAULT_LIST_CONTAINER_NAME (default: 'object_list')

The list view uses this key to group its data.

CMS_PAGE_DATA_POST_PROCESSOR (default: None)

This hook allows you to post process the data of a CMS page by defining a module path.

PLACEHOLDER_DATA_POST_PROCESSOR (default: None)

This hook allows you to post process the data of a placeholder by defining a module path.

Partials

We call global page elements that are used to render a template “partial”. The contents of a partial do not change from one page to another. In a django CMS project partials are implemented as static placeholders. Because we don’t render any HTML templates, we need to configure the static placeholders for each template in DJANGOCMS_SPA_TEMPLATES as partials. To edit your placeholder and static placeholder data, you need to render both in the edit mode:

{% if request.toolbar.edit_mode_active %}
    {% placeholder "main" %}
    {% static_placeholder "footer" %}
{% endif %}

Usually there are other parts like the menu or any other template tag that work pretty much like static placeholders. Because we don’t have a template that allows us to render template tags, we need to have a custom implementation for those needs. We decided to use a callback approach that allows developers to bring custom data into the partial list. Define your callbacks in DJANGOCMS_SPA_PARTIAL_CALLBACKS by adding a partial key and the module path of the callback function. You will find an example in djangocms_spa/partial_callbacks.py. Your function should return a dictionary like this:

{
    'type': 'generic',
    'content': {
        'my_var': 1
    }
}

Credits

Tools used in rendering this package:

• Cookiecutter

• cookiecutter-djangopackage

History