Frontend editing for Page and Django models

New in version 3.0.

As well as PlaceholderFields, ‘ordinary’ Django model fields (both on CMS Pages and your own Django models) can also be edited through django CMS’s frontend editing interface. This is very convenient for the user because it saves having to switch between frontend and admin views.

Using this interface, model instance values that can be edited show the “Double-click to edit” hint on hover. Double-clicking opens a pop-up window containing the changeform for that model.

Warning

By default and for consistency with previous releases, templatetags used by this feature mark as safe the content of the rendered model attribute. This may be a security risk if used on fields which may hold non-trusted content. Be aware, and use the templatetags accordingly. To change this behaviour, set the setting: CMS_UNESCAPED_RENDER_MODEL_TAGS to False.

Warning

This feature is only partially compatible with django-hvad: using render_model with hvad-translated fields (say {% render_model object ‘translated_field’ %} return error if the hvad-enabled object does not exists in the current language. As a workaround render_model_icon can be used instead.

Templatetags

This feature relies on some template tags sharing common code:

• render_model
• render_model_icon
• render_model_add
• render_model_block

Look at the tag-specific page for a detailed reference; in the examples below render_model is assumed.

Page titles edit

For CMS pages you can edit the titles from the frontend; according to the attribute specified a overridable default field will be editable.

Main title:

{% render_model request.current_page "title" %}

Page title:

{% render_model request.current_page "page_title" %}

Menu title:

{% render_model request.current_page "menu_title" %}

All three titles:

{% render_model request.current_page "titles" %}

You can always customise the editable fields by providing the edit_field parameter:

{% render_model request.current_page "title" "page_title,menu_title" %}

Page menu edit

By using the special keyword changelist as edit field the frontend editing will show the page tree; a common pattern for this is to enable changes in the menu by wrapping the menu templatetags:

{% render_model_block request.current_page "changelist" %}
    <h3>Menu</h3>
    <ul>
        {% show_menu 1 100 0 1 "sidebar_submenu_root.html" %}
    </ul>
{% endrender_model_block %}

Will render to:

<div class="cms_plugin cms_plugin-cms-page-changelist-1">
    <h3>Menu</h3>
    <ul>
        <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="/another">another</a></li>
        [...]
</div>

Editing ‘ordinary’ Django models

As noted above, your own Django models can also present their fields for editing in the frontend. This is achieved by using the FrontendEditableAdminMixin base class.

Note that this is only required for fields other than PlaceholderFields. PlaceholderFields are automatically made available for frontend editing.

Configure the model’s admin class

Configure your admin class by adding the FrontendEditableAdminMixin mixin to it (see Django admin documentation for general Django admin information).

from cms.admin.placeholderadmin import FrontendEditableAdminMixin
from django.contrib import admin
class MyModelAdmin(FrontendEditableAdminMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):
    ...

The ordering is important: as usual, mixins must come first.

Then set up the templates where you want to expose the model for editing, adding a render_model templatetag:

{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "some_attribute" %}</h1>
{% endblock content %}

See templatetag reference for arguments documentation.

Selected fields edit

Frontend editing is also possible for a set of fields.

Set up the admin

You need to add to your model admin a tuple of fields editable from the frontend admin:

from cms.admin.placeholderadmin import FrontendEditableAdminMixin
from django.contrib import admin
class MyModelAdmin(FrontendEditableAdminMixin, admin.ModelAdmin):
    frontend_editable_fields = ("foo", "bar")
    ...

Set up the template

Then add comma separated list of fields (or just the name of one field) to the templatetag:

{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "some_attribute" "some_field,other_field" %}</h1>
{% endblock content %}

Special attributes

The attribute argument of the templatetag is not required to be a model field, property or method can also be used as target; in case of a method, it will be called with request as argument.

Custom views

You can link any field to a custom view (not necessarily an admin view) to handle model-specific editing workflow.

The custom view can be passed either as a named url (view_url parameter) or as name of a method (or property) on the instance being edited (view_method parameter). In case you provide view_method it will be called whenever the templatetag is evaluated with request as parameter.

The custom view does not need to obey any specific interface; it will get edit_fields value as a GET parameter.

See templatetag reference for arguments documentation.

Example view_url:

{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "some_attribute" "some_field,other_field" "" "admin:exampleapp_example1_some_view" %}</h1>
{% endblock content %}

Example view_method:

class MyModel(models.Model):
    char = models.CharField(max_length=10)
    def some_method(self, request):
        return "/some/url"
{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "some_attribute" "some_field,other_field" "" "" "some_method" %}</h1>
{% endblock content %}

Model changelist

By using the special keyword changelist as edit field the frontend editing will show the model changelist:

{% render_model instance "name" "changelist" %}

Will render to:

<div class="cms_plugin cms_plugin-myapp-mymodel-changelist-1">
    My Model Instance Name
</div>

Filters

If you need to apply filters to the output value of the templatetag, add quoted sequence of filters as in Django filter templatetag:

{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
<h1>{% render_model instance "attribute" "" "" "truncatechars:9" %}</h1>
{% endblock content %}

Context variable

The templatetag output can be saved in a context variable for later use, using the standard as syntax:

{% load cms_tags %}
{% block content %}
{% render_model instance "attribute" as variable %}
<h1>{{ variable }}</h1>
{% endblock content %}