News Development Notes
Models
Category: name + slug with default alphabetical ordering.Post: title, optional category, CKEditor content, FK to members.Member as author, timestamps (created_time, published_time, modified_time), and slug (max 50 chars). Methods publish(), unpublish(), update() manage timestamps.Post.title_shine (default False, with a db_default so the previous release can still insert rows during a blue-green deploy) adds the title-shine class to the title on the homepage news column, the /news/ list and the article page. The class only has styles in DaTe’s static/date/core/css/base.css and homepage.css, so the admin hides the checkbox unless TITLE_SHINE_ENABLED is on (DaTe only).- Publication is controlled by
published_time: NULL means hidden, a future timestamp means scheduled, and a past timestamp means public. Use Post.objects.published() for public-facing post lists and detail lookups. The Post.published property reflects the same time-based check.
PostCreationForm and PostEditForm both attach request.user to set the author (creation) or just update metadata (edit). Creation form slugifies with slugify_max; published_time is editable in the form (defaults to “now” so saving immediately makes the post public).
Admin
PostAdmin swaps between the two forms in add_view vs change_view. Columns show author, category, created/modified times, computed publication status, and the raw published_time. The publication list filter splits posts into published / scheduled / hidden buckets. Categories get their own simple ModelAdmin. get_fieldsets drops title_shine when TITLE_SHINE_ENABLED is off.
Views
index: paginates 10 latest un-categorized, published posts, ordered by publication time and then primary key in descending order so posts with identical timestamps remain stable across pages. Pagination shows a five-page window around the current page, with first/last-page links and ellipses when needed.article: fetches a published, un-categorized post by slug.author: lists all published posts tied to a specific username using the same stable ordering.category_index & category_article: same as above but filter by Category.slug; category indexes use the same pagination window as the main index.
Feed/SEO
- There’s also
news/feed.py (not covered here) generating RSS/Atom feeds; ensure Post timestamps stay accurate for feed readers.
Extending
- Add
summary or hero_image fields if marketing wants richer cards on the homepage.
- Consider
prepopulated_fields = {"slug": ("title",)} in admin to reduce manual slug errors.