Proto

Setup

First...

1. Install distribute: curl http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py | python
2. Install pip: curl https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py | python
3. Install virtualenvwrapper by following these instructions: http://www.doughellmann.com/docs/virtualenvwrapper/#introduction
4. Create a virtualenv for the next steps: mkvirtualenv [env name]

Then...

1. Clone the repository: git clone git@github.com:sdornan/proto.git
2. Install the requirements: pip install -r requirements.txt
3. Create an empty site_media/uploads folder in the project base directory
4. Create the database: python manage.py development syncdb and follow the prompts
5. Run the development server: python manage.py development runserver

Details

The wiki and forums are the two main components I spent time on. There are also news articles with a threaded commenting system, a modified/cleaned up version of django-threadedcomments.

You can create a news article in the admin at /admin/ to check out the threaded commenting.

Wiki versioning is done using django-reversion, and the wiki history page allows you to generate diffs between versions. Creating a new type of wiki model is as simple as creating a Wiki model subclass that inherits from the base Wiki model. In this case, games is the app that contains the Wiki object subclasses. Dynamic routing and views happen by introspecting the wiki models' class name. Wiki objects use a base template in the wiki app, unless an overriding template exists in the same app as the Wiki model subclass.

You can create a wiki page for a game, as an example, by going to /wiki/create/game/. You can then view all of the Wiki objects at /wiki/, or of a particular type at /wiki/game/ for example.

If you have Elasticsearch running (install with brew install elasticsearch) and do manage.py development update_index, it will handle autocompletion in the site's search field using Haystack.

It has a fully functioning API using Tastypie. You can access the list of model endpoints at /api/v1/?format=json. Anytime the JavaScript code needs to get a JSON representation of a model, it could use this API. It could also potentially be used for making minor updates to models, but only if it's secured properly first.

Sharing Apps Between Sites

Each of the folders in the proto/ directory is a Django app. Installing an app to a site is as simple as appending the app to the list named INSTALLED_APPS in the settings file. They don't have to be in the project folder; they could also live in separate repositories and be installed via pip like the third-party packages listed in the requirements files.

Base templates for apps are in each app's templates/ directory. These can be overridden at the site level by putting a file in the base templates/ directory with the same name and relative path as the base template that you want to override. This also works for image, CSS and Javascript files, which are in the static/ directory.

For example, if you want to override the forums app's forum_list.html template (/proto/forums/templates/forums/forum_list.html) at the site level, you would put the overriding template in the site's template directory. In proto's case, this would be /templates/forums/forums_list.html.

You could also extend any of the models and views, or reroute URLs, contained in the apps at the site level.