How to enable frontend editing for Page and Django models

How to enable 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 change form for that model.

Note

This interface is not currently available for touch-screen users, but will be improved in future releases.

Warning

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

Template tags

This feature relies on five template tags sharing common code. All require that you {% load cms_tags %} in your template:

render_model (for editing a specific field)
render_model_block (for editing any of the fields in a defined block)
render_model_icon (for editing a field represented by another value, such as an image)
render_model_add (for adding an instance of the specified model)
render_model_add_block (for adding an instance of the specified model)

Look at the tag-specific page for more detailed reference and discussion of limitations and caveats.

Page titles edit

For CMS pages you can edit the titles from the frontend; according to the attribute specified a default field, which can also be overridden, 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" %}

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 template tags:

{% 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:

<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-start cms-plugin-cms-page-changelist-1"></tempate>
    <h3>Menu</h3>
    <ul>
        <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="/another">another</a></li>
        [...]
<template class="cms-plugin cms-plugin-end cms-plugin-cms-page-changelist-1"></tempate>

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 template tag:

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

See template tag 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 template tag:

{% 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 template tag 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 template tag 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 template tag 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" %}