Forking Applications

Of course you’ll want to write your own custom application and manage it with DartCMS. You have two options to do that:

1. Use existing DartCMS app with small changes.
2. Write app from scratch and manage it with DartCMS.

Changing existing applications

In your settings.py file you have something like that:

from dartcms import get_dartcms_core_apps

...

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
] + get_dartcms_core_apps()

You can pass optional parameter replacements to get_dartcms_core_apps function:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
] + get_dartcms_core_apps(replacements=['app.feeds'])

This will replace DartCMS’s app named feeds with your app app.feeds.

You can re-declare DartCMS feeds app’s models in your app.feeds.models module like that:

# app: custom_app

from django.db import models

import dartcms

from dartcms.apps.feeds.abstract_models import AbstractFeedItem


class FeedItem(AbstractFeedItem):
    custom_field = models.CharField(max_length=255)

By doing this, you’ll replace DartCMS FeedItem model with your own. And DartCMS will manage this model.

Writing application from scratch

If you need some application that do not exist in DartCMS, you can write your own and point DartCMS to it.

1. Create application with such structure:

--<app_name>
    --__init__.py
    --models.py
    --urls.py

2. Write some code in models.py:

# models.py

from django.db import models


class TinyModel(models.Model):
    foo = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    bar = models.DateTimeField()

3. Create url scheme:

# urls.py

from django.conf.urls import url, include
from django.forms import modelform_factory

from dartcms.utils.config import DartCMSConfig
from dartcms.views import GridView, UpdateObjectView, DeleteObjectView, InsertObjectView
from .models import TinyModel

config = DartCMSConfig({
    'model': TinyModel,
    'grid': {
        'grid_columns': [
            # Keys 'label', 'type' are optional here.
            {'field': 'foo', 'label': _('Foo'), 'type': 'string', 'width': '70%'},
            {'field': 'bar', 'label': _('Bar'), 'type': 'datetime', 'width': '30%'},
        ],
    },
    'form': {
        'form_class': modelform_factory(TinyModel, exclude=[]),
    }
})

urlpatterns = [
    url(r'^$', GridView.as_view(**config.grid), name='index'),
    url(r'^insert/$', InsertObjectView.as_view(**config.form), name='insert'),
    url(r'^update/(?P<pk>\d+)/$', UpdateObjectView.as_view(**config.form), name='update'),
    url(r'^delete/(?P<pk>\d+)/$', DeleteObjectView.as_view(**config.base), name='delete'),
]

4. Add DARTCMS_ADDITIONAL_APPS_URLPATTERNS setting to your settings.py file:

DARTCMS_ADDITIONAL_APPS_URLPATTERNS = [
    ('some-url', '<app_name>.urls', '<app_name>'),
]

This setting must be a list containing tuples. Tuple elements:

• First: some url to navigate DartCMS user to your application management (without slashes).
• Second: path to your application’s url scheme.
• Third: namespace of your application.

In the DartCMS core this setting is used in this way:

additional_apps = getattr(settings, 'DARTCMS_ADDITIONAL_APPS_URLPATTERNS', [])

if additional_apps:
    additional_patterns = []
    for app in additional_apps:
        additional_patterns.append(url(r'^%s/' % app[0], include(app[1], namespace=app[2])))

    urlpatterns += additional_patterns

5. Add new DartCMS module with Django admin and set it’s slug as url of your application (first param in each tuple).
6. Navigate your browser to DartCMS and you’ll see your application in the left navigation menu.