Site Shell (date app) Development Notes
Responsibilities
date/views.py:index composes the landing page context. It fetches:
- Upcoming events (
Event objects where event_date_end >= now) plus the last 31 days for calendar dots.
- Latest three un-categorized news posts.
- Albins Angels spotlight (news posts in that category within 10 days).
- Ad banners (
AdUrl) and Instagram embeds (IgUrl).
- Also provides the homepage-template selection logic, language switching endpoint, and custom 404/500 handlers.
Homepage Variants
get_homepage_template_name() returns the standard date/start.html template for most sites.- For
PROJECT_NAME=kk, it occasionally serves date/april_start.html on April 1st.
- Keep variant-specific homepage behavior here rather than scattering date checks through templates.
Calendar Data Structure
calendar_format() converts the event queryset into a dict["YYYY-MM-DD"] = {...} used by the front-end calendar widget. Keys include link, modifier, eventFullDate, eventTitle, and partial HTML stub.
Language Handling
set_language(request) reads POST["lang"], normalizes it through date.language_utils.resolve_language(), stores the choice in Django’s language cookie, and redirects back to the referrer.- If the referrer points to an internal page,
date.language_utils.strip_language_prefix() rewrites the path back to the canonical unprefixed URL before redirecting.
date/middleware.py contains the project-specific language middleware:
LanguageStateMiddleware restores the previous translation state after each request.LangMiddleware activates the language resolved from the cookie, then Swedish by default, while ignoring URL path prefixes.USE_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE_HEADER=True allows browser language detection before falling back to Swedish.
- Shared URL configuration uses canonical unprefixed public routes such as
/, /news/, and /events/ even when ENABLE_LANGUAGE_FEATURES=True.
Error Views
handler404/handler500 render templates in templates/core/ to avoid exposing stack traces in production.
Middleware Notes
HTCPCPMiddleware serves the custom 418 page for coffee-themed easter-egg routes.CDNRewriteMiddleware rewrites known storage hostnames in non-streaming responses. If you introduce new public asset hostnames, add them to CDN_URL_TRANSFORMATIONS in settings.
Extending
- If more widgets are added to the home page, keep the aggregation work inside
index() minimal; heavy data should be fetched via dedicated services or cached.
- Consider moving the calendar formatting to a serializer to simplify testing.
- When changing language-aware redirects, test both direct unprefixed URL visits and redirects from the language switcher.
- Add tests in
date/tests.py for homepage context selection, language switching, and calendar formatting behavior.