if i understand you right, you´re looking for something like this: http://www.vonautomatisch.at/framework/dkit/description.php?id=4
we wrote that proposal a couple of month ago. so far, we don´t have a solution. however, it might be interesting to take a look at simons cms project: https://simon.bofh.ms/cgi-bin/trac-django-projects.cgi/wiki/CmsProject i didn´t play around with it, so i can´t really tell whether it is implementing the functionality that you´re looking for (maybe you check out what simon wrote about "AdHocOrganization"). my personal opinion on that subject: 1. it´s not too hard to build a template from different components (or boxes or whatever you might call them). it´s easier if the template is XML though. 2. what´s not so easy (IMHO) is to (re)write the view, based on your decision of what to display. 3. you could have pre-defined snippets (e.g. stored in the databse) for the view and the templates and add them according to the users decision. with doing that, you might end up with a complex view. that´s maybe not really helpful now, but i´ve been thinking about that subject for a while, discussing it within different user-groups (django, helma, rails) and still don´t have a proper solution. patrick > > Hi, all. > > Just started fiddling around with Django a couple of days ago, going > through the examples, and I really (really really) like what I've seen > so far. > > I've now hit a question which *could* be a showstopper for what I'm > looking to do. Basically, I want to provide each registered user of a > portal site with the ability to > 1) choose layout of his portal site > 2) place different "components" into the portal site (following the > layout chosen in step 1). > A bit like start.com or Google's personalized homepage (but without the > AJAX stuff for now). > > I haven't (yet) discovered a way to dynamically generate the template > contents, so that Wilma Flintstone can have a 2-to-1 vertical column > setup on her portal page, while Betty Rubble goes for a stacked > horizontal alignment of components in her portal page. Also, Wilma has > twenty different components in her multi-column portal page (Amazon > links, yesterday's weather in Bedrock, next week's lucky lottery > numbers, and 200 ways to bake bread from Slate) while Betty only has > three. That's all she can handle. So, technically, the template would > need to be dynamically generated from preferences in the user database, > putting in however many DIVs are required for the varying number of > modules each user has on her portal page. > > The components would be selected from a list of available components > (provided by me) and could be arranged within the content area (e.g. > shuffled up or down in the right-hand column bar). > > For a solution to this, I'm thinking along the lines of storing the > name of the template to be used in the DB, fetching it from the user > model and supplying that to the rendering method. I think that would > work. But for the various components I'd need to delegate to different > component implementations, so I would need some form of dynamic include > or template nesting mechanism, with the main view delegating to > instances of the sub-view (instantiated depending on the user's list of > components). This would mean recursive template processing (start with > top-level view, fetch list of components from DB, iterate over > components, go to each component and fetch its template/view and > include that in the original page. > > How would you folks approach this problem? Is Django even the right > kind of tool for this kind of site, or would you recommend using > something else? > > Thanks for your input, > > Daniel >
