This application provides a model and the necessary template tags for defining editable content block areas in the templates. Without any need for initial data, it can generate the blocks in the database when required. It also provides an "Edit" link next to the blocks. If JavaScript is enabled and the included JS class is loaded, these links enable AJAX-based, inline editing of content right in the page. Otherwise, they become simple links to the admin area of the selected block.

Dependencies: django, markdown, django-linguo

To install, download the source tarball, unpack and run pip install . This will add content_blocks to your python path as well as pull in the dependencies if they are not installed.

To activate Content Blocks, include it in your INSTALLED_APPS list, under your project's settings.py file.

To render the content using markdown and show placeholder text when DEBUG is set to True, the app depends on markup and webdesign applications, included in django.contrib.

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.markup',
    'django.contrib.webdesign',

    'linguo',
    'content_blocks',
)

The second step is to include content_blocks.urls in your urls.py:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(_(r'^content-blocks/'), include('content_blocks.urls')),
)

Finally, you'll need to force admin into English mode or content blocks will not work properly when editing in other languages. Append the following to MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES in settings.py:

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    # ...
    'content_blocks.middleware.ForceEnglishInAdminMiddleware',
)

After running ./manage.py syncdb, app will be ready to use.

Content Blocks can only be used through template tags. To define a block, simply load the tag library and call it as such:

{% load content_blocks_tags %}
{% show_content_block "about" %}
{% show_image_block "ceo" %}

show_content_block only requires the unique identifier name of the block by default. You can also provide three optional parameters: editable, markup, and amount. If editable is set to "False", the edit link is omitted. Similarly, if markup is set to "False", markdown is not applied to the content. If amount is set to a number (or variable representing a number) and there is no content for the block in the database, you will get that many words of "lorem" text (if omitted or set to an empty string, you will get the standard paragraph of approximately 70 words).

{% show_content_block "about" "False" "False" 7 %}

To enable JavaScript functionality, you should import the JS enhancement app for content blocks.

show_image_block optionally takes a template name to override the the template used to render the image block on a per image block basis:

{% show_image_block "ceo" True "ceo_image_block.html" %}