Re: Developing a flexible CMS

Hi Kyle, I've run into the same problems before. I think
you'll find
Django admin is great for simple operations involving single
records
and the most basic relations. But for anything beyond that,
you'll
probably need to roll your own admin page.

On Jun 25, 1:15 am, Kyle Fox <kyle....gmail.com> wrote:
> I hope I can explain this well, because I've been
wracking my poor
> little brain trying to figure out how to do this 
>
> I'm trying to create a flexible CMS.  I want it to be
easy for users
> to create a Page, and attach all kinds of content
("components") to
> that page.  These components would all be Model
classes.  Here are two
> simple examples of the components I had in mind:
>
> class TextSnippet(models.Model):
>     body = models.TextField()
>
> class Photo(models.Model):
>     image =
models.ImageField(upload_to="photos")
>
> The idea is that a user add an arbitrary number of
these components to
> a Page model.  A Page model is nothing more than a
container to hold
> components, and a URL associated with the Page,
something like:
>
> class Page(models.Model):
>         url = models.CharField( maxlength=100,
unique=True,
> validator_list=[validators.isAlphaNumericURL])
>
> The problem is that I can't figure out a good way to
associate
> instances of TextSnippet and Photo with a page.  It's
obviously a many-
> to-many between the components and pages (a component
like a photo can
> be on many pages, and a page can have many components),
but I also
> need to store more information about that particular
page-component
> relationship, for example a IntegerField that specifies
the
> component's position on that page.  Here's what I've
come up with so
> far:
>
> class PageComponent(models.Model):
>         page = models.ForeignKey(Page,
related_name="components",
> edit_inline=models.TABULAR)
>         content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType)
>         object_id = models.IntegerField(core=True)
>         position = models.IntegerField(default=0,
blank=True)
>
> It "works" not too bad.  Conceptually (from
the shell), I think it
> does what I want.  However, I'm having a HECK of a time
getting the
> Page form in the admin to work in an intuitive way. 
When adding
> components to a page, the user sees a drop-down list of
content_types,
> and has to enter an object_id.  It works for me because
I know what to
> put for the object_id, but a regular user wouldn't....
>
> I think this would require me to write a custom form
class for adding
> and editing a page, but with these relationships I
really don't even
> know where to begin :S
>
> If anyone can provide advice (or just flat out tell me
if I'm thinking
> about this wrong), it would be much appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
> Kyle


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