django-tablets

tablets is a database templating layer for Django.
- It works out of the box with regular Django templates, and requires only installing jinja2 to support Jinja2 templates.
django-ace is used to provide a nice in-browser editing experience.
Requires django>=1.8, to leverage the modern templating system

Preview

Installation

Install using pip:

pip install tablets

Add tablets and mptt to your INSTALLED_APPS setting:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'mptt',
    'tablets',
)

Add the tablets template loader to your TEMPLATE_LOADERS setting:

TEMPLATES = [
    ...
    'loaders': [
        'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
        'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
        'tablets.loaders.database.Loader',
    ]
]

Make sure you do not define the APP_DIRS directory, lest Django complain.

Jinja2 Support

Only requires running:

pip install jinja2

Jinja2 Filecaching

Tablets reloads templates from the database each time. To turn off this functionality and only reload templates after an application reload, change the value of should_reload_database_templates to False:

# Defaults to True
SHOULD_RELOAD_JINJA2_TEMPLATES = False

Django-Ace in the Admin

By default, tablets uses django-ace to use the great AceWidget for admin in-browser editing.

To disable or tweak these settings, adjust the following settings (default values shown):

USE_ACE_WIDGET = True
ACE_MODE = "twig"  # Provides syntax highlighting closest to Django/Jinja2 templates
ACE_THEME = "chrome"
ACE_WIDTH = "80%"  # Defaults to 100%
ACE_HEIGHT = "500px"  # Defaults to 350px

Usage

First, enter some templates into your Database.

parent = Template.objects.create(name="Site Base", content="""
    <h1>{% block hero %}Hello, World!{% endblock hero %}</h1>

   {% block body %}
       <p>This is a message from your friends at <code>Tablet</code>!</p>
   {% endblock body %}
""")
landing_page_template = Template.objects.create(
    name="Landing Page",
    parent=parent,
    content="""{% block body %}OVERRIDDEN FROM CHILD TEMPLATE!{% endblock body %}"""
)

# views.py
from django.views.generic.base import TemplateView

class MyView(TemplateView):
    # The ``tablet`` template loader will know how to find
    # this as if it were a file on disk like normal templates
    template_name = "Landing Page"

And that's it! When you hit a URL that registers to MyView, the contents of the "Landing Page" template will be rendered out of the database!