Disclaimer: This package serves as a proof of concept rather than a production-ready solution!
Django Single File Templates -- inspired by Vue's Single file components
Make your Django templates more organized by holding your HTML and all the related CSS and JavaScript in a sensible way.
An example Single File Template (the emoji comments are not part of it, they're just here for explanation):
example.sft
👇 Your regular Django Template goes here (with all its usual functionality) 👇
<template>
{% extends 'example/base.sft' %}
{% block main %}
<h1>This is index page</h1>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Fugit eaque obcaecati maxime eos
inventore tenetur, debitis atque quaerat modi, et illum id error quisquam consequatur
reprehenderit, laboriosam exercitationem, provident aut.</p>
<h2 id="time"></h2>
{% endblock %}
</template>
👇 Your JavaScript goes here 👇
<script>
document.getElementById('time').innerHTML = new Date();
</script>
👇 Your CSS goes here 👇
<style>
p {
width: 50%;
background-color: white;
margin: auto;
}
</style>Which Django-SFT will turn into 3 separate files (.html, .js and .css) and both the JS and CSS will be injected into the .html. So the resulting .html file will look something like this:
sft/example.html
{% extends 'example/base.sft' %}
{% block main %}
<h1>This is index page</h1>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Fugit eaque obcaecati maxime eos
inventore tenetur, debitis atque quaerat modi, et illum id error quisquam consequatur
reprehenderit, laboriosam exercitationem, provident aut.</p>
<h2 id="time"></h2>
{% endblock %}
{% block sft_style %}
⭐️ See how the CSS was extracted into a separate file, but it's now automatically included in the template ⭐️
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{% static 'example/sft/index.css'%}"></link>
{% endblock sft_style %}
{% block sft_script %}
⭐️ See how the JS was extracted into a separate file, but it's now automatically included in the template ⭐️
<script src="{% static 'example/sft/index.js'%}"></script>
{% endblock sft_script %}This pattern:
- Allows you to have all the pieces that are needed for the template to function in one file
- Is flexible enough to support much more complicated examples than the one above
From Vue's documentation:
One important thing to note is that separation of concerns is not equal to separation of file types. In modern UI development, we have found that instead of dividing the codebase into three huge layers that interweave with one another, it makes much more sense to divide them into loosely-coupled components and compose them. Inside a component, its template, logic and styles are inherently coupled, and collocating them actually makes the component more cohesive and maintainable.
Similar logic could be applied to Django's templates. HTML, JavaScript and CSS are inherently coupled so it makes sense to put them together.
Introducing Django Single File Templates (SFT).
Install Django Single File Templates:
pip install django-sft
Add it to your INSTALLED_APPS:
INSTALLED_APPS = (
...
'django_sft',
...
)Add SFT Template loader (in your settings.py):
TEMPLATES = [
{
...
'OPTIONS': {
'loaders': [
'django_sft.template.SFTLoader',
'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
],
...
}
}
]You can now start using Single file templates as your templates.
Add a new SFT by adding a .sft file to your templates folder (either
in your apps or root templates folder). SFT should include at least HTML
(you can use Django's template language), but it can also include
script and style tags:
<template>
{% load static %}
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Example Website</title>
</head>
<body>
<header>
<nav>
<a href="/">Home</a>
<a href="/page" id="page">Page</a>
</nav>
</header>
{% block main %}
<h1>This is where the content will go</h1>
{% endblock %}
</body>
</html>
</template>
<script>
const page = document.getElementById('page');
page.addEventListener('click', (ev) => {
ev.preventDefault();
alert('You clicked the page');
});
</script>
<style>
body {
background-color: gray;
}
</style>In your views you can render this template directly and SFT Template loader will get the right template for you.
def view(request):
return render('my-template.sft')Single file templates can also extend other SFTs.
<template>
{% extends 'example/base.sft' %}
{% block main %}
<h1>This is index page</h1>
<h2>Update</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Fugit eaque obcaecati maxime eos inventore tenetur, debitis atque quaerat modi, et illum id error quisquam consequatur reprehenderit, laboriosam exercitationem, provident aut.</p>
<h2 id="time"></h2>
{% endblock %}
</template>
<script>
document.getElementById('time').innerHTML = new Date();
</script>
<style>
p {
width: 50%;
background-color: white;
margin: auto;
}
</style>It can also include external scripts and styles (bootstrap example):
<template>
...
</template>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.1.slim.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@4.5.3/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js"></script>
<script>
const page = document.getElementById('page');
page.addEventListener('click', (ev) => {
ev.preventDefault();
alert('You clicked the page');
});
</script>
<style src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@4.5.3/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css"></style>
<style>
body {
background-color: gray;
}
</style>Single file templates will automatically be parsed and compiled when you
manage.py runserver if DEBUG = True. You can also run
manage.py compile_sft to compile manually.
When SFT is compiled (on runserver or manually by running manage.py compile_sft), django-sft
will grab the SFT file and produce appropriate .js, .css and .html files.
They will be created in sft directory (under static and templates
directories respectively). The html files will be automatically injected
with references to the static files. When a view will try to render
.sft template, the SFT Template Loader will look for resulting .html
file instead and return that.
So for example if you have an example app in your Django project, you might define index.sft
and base.sft Single File Templates like so:
example
├── __init__.py
├── admin.py
├── apps.py
├── models.py
├── templates
│ └── example
│ ├── base.sft 👈
│ └── index.sft 👈
├── tests.py
└── views.py
This will then compile to
example
├── ...
...
├── static
│ └── example
│ └── sft
│ ├── base.css 👈
│ ├── base.js 👈
│ ├── index.css 👈
│ └── index.js 👈
└── templates
└── example
├── base.sft
├── index.sft
└── sft
├── base.html 👈
└── index.html 👈
And the .html files will have the related static files automatically injected.
The current implementation is quite simple and serves as a proof of concept rather than a production-ready solution.
Look for a working example under tests folder.
- TODO
- TODO: no tests written yet
Does the code actually work?
source <YOURVIRTUALENV>/bin/activate
(myenv) $ pip install tox
(myenv) $ tox
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