Writing plugins

Plugins for a given model extend an abstract base class created by django-content-editor’s create_plugin_base function. A minimal example follows here:

from content_editor import Region, create_plugin_base

class Article(models.Model):
    regions = [Region(...)]
    title = models.CharField(...)

ArticlePlugin = create_plugin_base(Article)

class Text(ArticlePlugin):
    text = models.TextField()

class Download(ArticlePlugin):
    download = models.FileField(upload_to="downloads/")
    caption = models.CharField(blank=True, max_length=200)

The create_plugin_base creates an abstract model with the following fields and methods in the example above:

• parent: A foreign key to Article.

• region: A char field ready for holding the region’s key it belongs to.

• ordering: An integer field which orders the list of content elements. The value of the ordering field should be treated as opaque in that you should not depend on exact values and gaps in the ordering field values.

• get_queryset: A classmethod without arguments which is used to fetch a queryset of plugin instances. If you have a plugin with a foreign key (not to parent but to other instances) it would probably be a really good idea to override this classmethod with one that adds a select_related() call.

Historical note

FeinCMS 1’s create_content_type method could not be avoided because it added the dynamically created (concrete!) model to a few lists for bookkeeping.

By contrast using create_plugin_base is not strictly necessary. However, django-content-editor and by extension feincms3 assume a few properties which you’d have to replicate by hand such as the model fields, the related_name pattern etc.