MrBenn Toolbar Plugin

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The MrBenn Toolbar Plugin is an addon for the Django Debug Toolbar which allows you to quickly open template files and views in your IDE.

Installation

To install the MrBenn, you can use pip! Simply follow the command below:

pip install mrbenn-toolbar-plugin

After the package has been installed, head over to your settings.py. You need to add the following:

• in INSTALLED_APPS add mrbenn_panel

• under DEBUG_TOOLBARS add mrbenn_panel.panel.MrBennPanel. We recommend you remove debug_toolbar.panels.staticfiles.StaticFilesPanel.

• you need to add the location of the IDE you would like to use to open files with an option called DJANGO_WINDOWS_IDE in your settings. For example, the setting for the PyCharm Interpreter would be DJANGO_WINDOWS_IDE="C:/Program Files/JetBrains/PyCharm 2023.1.1/bin/pycharm64.exe.

• MAC USERS: you will need to tell your operating system to use your IDE to open python and html files by default. This guide could be helpful.

• LINUX USERS: we've not tested this yet. We assume the same steps for MAC USERS.

Limitations and next steps

Do not use this package in production. Do not use Django-Debug-Toolbar in production either!

This package opens files on the machine running the dev server, driven by HTTP requests, so its endpoints are guarded:

• they only respond when the Django Debug Toolbar would be shown (same SHOW_TOOLBAR_CALLBACK / INTERNAL_IPS / DEBUG gate);
• they are POST-only and CSRF-protected, so another site open in your browser cannot trigger them;
• the file to open is resolved server-side (templates via Django's loaders, views via the URLconf), never taken as a raw path, and its existence is checked before the OS is asked to open it. Django's template loaders reject .. and absolute paths.

Keep in mind this is still a development-only convenience: run your dev server on localhost, not on a shared/public interface.

Requirements

On top of Django, MrBenn requires the Django Debug Toolbar package found here.

How to contribute?

All contributions are appreciated! To contribute, simply create a new branch with your contribution and raise a PR! You can ping @andytwoods should any issues arise!

Should you get stuck on something, we also have a contributing section in our wiki! LINK TBD

What's with the name?

Mr Benn was a kids UK TV show from the 70s (wikipedia). The main character, Mr Benn, on each episode walked through a magical door which took him on different adventures. Perhaps I was thinking that this package in a similar fashion performs a little IDE magic, transporting you to the right file, each time you click the link to your current view or template. #ModernKidsTVshowsSuck #CBEEBIESthoughRocks