jQuery Django Messages UI

JS client-side messages plugin, with support for Django contrib.messages app

Getting Started

django-messages-ui can be used as a standalone jQuery plugin for adding and removing client-side messages, or as a Django add-on to additionally support the Django contrib.messages app. It should be called on the message list element, and accepts options for message selectors, transient messages (that disappear on click or key-press), and close-links. The messages themselves should be styled with CSS.

Messages can be dynamically added via Handlebars.js, ICanHaz.js, or any other templating engine which creates precompiled callable template fns. If used as a Django plugin there's a Python middleware to automatically add messages from the request into Ajax JSON responses.

Dependencies

• jQuery library
• jQuery doTimeout plugin
• (optionally) handlebars.runtime.js 1.0.0
• (optionally) ICanHaz.js
• (optionally) django-icanhaz 0.2.0+

Installation as a Standalone jQuery Plugin

If using as a standalone jQuery plugin, download the production version or the development version, along with either the Handlebars.js precompiled template or the ICanHaz.js template.

Linking the JS:

<script src="dist/django-messages-ui.min.js"></script>

If desired, also include the precompiled JS template:

<script src="messages_ui/static/messages_ui/message.js"></script>

To override the default JS template, pass your own precompiled template function as option template.

If using ICanHaz.js, wrap the ICanHaz.js template (or your own custom template, if you don't want to use the default template) in a <script id="message" type="text/html"> tag and include it in your HTML, or import it in JS using ich.addTemplate('message', YOUR_TEMPLATE_STRING). Then pass in the precompiled template: template: ich.message.

Installation with Django

If using with Django, just pip install django-messages-ui to install (or download the tarball from PyPI, unpack it, and run python setup.py install). In your Django project settings, add "messages_ui" to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

Linking the JS:

<script src="{% static 'messages_ui/django-messages-ui.js' %}"></script>

If desired, also include the precompiled JS template:

<script src="{% static 'messages_ui/message.js' %}"></script>

If using ICanHaz.js to insert messages on the client side, use this template instead, and pass in the precompiled template: template: ich.message:

{% include "messages_ui/_messages_ich.html" %}

To override the default JS template, pass your own precompiled template function as option template.

Ajax

To enable automatic handling of messages from Ajax requests, add "messages_ui.middleware.AjaxMessagesMiddleware" to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES setting (directly after django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware), and pass handleAjax: true to the plugin initialization.

Warning

AjaxMessagesMiddleware converts all HTML AJAX responses into JSON responses with a messages key, and the HTML embedded in an html key. If your site uses HTML AJAX responses, this will likely require updates to other Ajax-handling code in your site. To avoid this for a particular response, set the attribute no_messages on that response to True before it passes through AjaxMessagesMiddleware.

Similarly, handleAjax: true globally sets the default expected dataType for AJAX requests to "json".

Usage

Calling the plugin:

$('#messages').messages();

Calling the plugin with a variety of options explicitly configured to their default values:

$('#messages').messages({
  message: '.message',          // Selector for individual messages
  closeLink: '.close',          // Selector for link to close message
                                //  ...set to ``false`` to disable
  closeCallback:                // Fn called when closeLink is clicked
    function (el) {
      el.stop().fadeOut('fast', function () {
        el.remove();
      });
    },
  transientMessage: '.success', // Selector for transient messages
  transientDelay: 500,          // Transient message callback delay (ms)
  transientCallback:            // Fn called after transientDelay
    function (el) {
      el.fadeOut(2000, function () { el.remove(); });
    },
  handleAjax: false,            // Enable automatic AJAX handling
  template: Handlebars.templates.message,
                                // Callable precompiled template fn.
  escapeHTML: true              // Set ``false`` to display unescaped
                                //  ...HTML in message content
});

Note

After the plugin is called once, subsequent calls on the same element will default to the options passed the first time, unless new options are explicitly provided.

Adding a message in JS:

$('#messages').messages('add', {message: "Sample Message", tags: "info"});

Adding a message with unescaped HTML in JS:

$('#messages').messages(
  'add',
  { message: "<a href='/'>Sample Message</a>", tags: "info" },
  { escapeHTML: false }
);