Getting started

To install, pip install django-snakeoil or use your favourite package manager.

You can use Snakeoil in two ways. If you’d like to attach metadata to an object, you can use the model abstract base class:

from snakeoil.models import SEOModel

class Article(SEOModel):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    author = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    main_image = models.Imagefield(blank=True, null=True)

    @property
    def author_name(self):
        return

    @property
    def snakeoil_metadata(self):
        metadata = {
            "default": [
                {
                    "name": "author",
                    "content": self.author.get_full_name(),
                },
                {"property": "og:title", "content": self.title},
            ]
        }
        if self.main_image:
            metadata["default"].append(
                {"property": "og:image", "attribute": "main_image"}
            )
        return metadata

You can also override these tags in the admin per-object.

For situations where you can’t change the model (flatpages, third party apps) or don’t have one at all, there is an SEOPath model that maps paths to your meta tags.

Tags are added in the admin (or however else you like) as JSON. For example:

{
    "default": [
        {"name": "description", "property": "og:description", "content": "Meta description"},
        {"property": "og:title", "content": "My blog post"},
        {"name": "author", "attribute": "author_name"},
        {"property": "og:image", "static": "img/default.jpg"}
    ]
}

Where default will work for any language. You can replace default with a language code, e.g. “nl_NL”, and these tags will only display if the current language is Dutch. This will generate something like:

<meta name="description" property="og:description" content="Meta description">
<meta property="og:title" "content="My blog post">
<!-- from my_object.author_name -->
<meta name="author" content="Tom Carrick">
<!-- build a static URL -->
<meta property="og:image" content="/static/img/default.jpg">

Note that when using static, width and height are not added, but you may add these yourself. For ImageField, this will be added automatically:

{
    "default": [
        {"property": "og:image", "attribute": "main_image"}
    ]
}

Results in:

<meta property="og:image" content="/media/blog_1_main_image.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="640">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="480">

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    "snakeoil",
    # ...
]

{% load snakeoil %}
{% block head %}
    {% meta %}
{% endblock %}

{% meta my_obj %}

from jinja2 import Environment
from snakeoil.jinja2 import get_meta_tags

def environment(**options):
    env = Environment(**options)
    env.globals.update(
        {
            "get_meta_tags": get_meta_tags,
            # ...
        }
    )
    return env

{% block meta %}
    {% with meta_tags=get_meta_tags() %}
        {% include "snakeoil/seo.jinja2" %}
    {% endwith %}
{% endblock meta %}

{% block meta %}
    {% with meta_tags=get_meta_tags(my_object) %}
        {% include "snakeoil/seo.jinja2" %}
    {% endwith %}
{% endblock meta %}

Notes

Thanks to kezabelle for the name. For those wondering:

Metadata is often used for SEO purposes. A lot of people (rightly or not) consider SEO to be snakeoil. Also, SnakEOil. Very clever, I know.

The old version of django-snakeoil can be found on the old branch, but won’t be updated.