This file documents the contents of this module

See the devel/ subdir for more devel-oriented doc.

==================== 1 minute howto

*  REQUIREMENTS  is to have python + django installed django
** should be straightforward
** see devel/django-install.txt in case of trouble

* git clone git://git.onelab.eu/myslice-django.git
-- or --
* git clone ssh://yourlogin@git.onelab.eu/git/myslice-django.git

* edit myslice/settings.py and
** change DEVELOPER_ROOT if you didnt clone into ~/git/myslice-django
** change the location of your backend API (not yet supported)

* edit myslice/config.py and enter the details of your manifold backend

* init django
$ manage.py syncdb
[[ at this point point it *might* be needed to run
$ make allst
 but as far as running a local server is concerned you should be good without that 
 feedback on this is appreciated]]

* run a local server:
$ manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

* use it from your browser 


==================== Status

*** Authentication ***

Although there still are a few hard-coded accounts in the system, you
will only be able to see some static views and won't be able to send
real queries if you use these, so you'd better use a real account (one
that your manifold backend knows about).

For logging out: click on 'logged as *jean*', this shows a
confirmation page for logging out. this is intended to be temporary.


*** Features ***

We have a basic model for asynchroneous queries (referring to manifold
queries) and for plugins (in the most general sense a plugin is just a
piece of the output that may be connected to a query)

Right now the UI has a handful of demo views only; as of this writing
only the list of slices actually comes from the manifold backend in an
asynchroneous way.

Also all the views are gathered in the trash/ locations for now, being
that they're only for assessment purposes.

* dahsboard : has one async. query and 2 plugins that share that
  query; the intent was to demo a different layout in both cases,
  although the datatables one won't work yet at this point.

* the 'Plugin' view demonstrates most of the available plugins.

* slice view : only demonstrates how to use URLs to pass arguments along

* scroll view : mostly it only illustrates that some pages can be made
  public (no need to login)

* tab view : a hand-made tab widget

Not much effort has yet been put into coming up with a nice layout,
feel free to tweak that but it's probably still way too early for
this.

==================== 

Third party tools shipped:

* jquery
* datatables
* spin
* bootstrap

I've tried to keep track of the version I picked and to have an easy upgrade path.

==================== Contents: 1st level subdirs

========== code from git
* myslice: 
  this is the django 'project', where to look for
  . settings.py
  . urls.py

* engine:
  the code for building / rendering plugins / queries

* plugins:
  the actual code for plugins

* auth: 
  a django 'app' that deals with authentication; see especially
  auth.backend.MyCustomBackend 
  for how to use a separate authentication system, 
  as well as settings.py for how to enable it

* insert_above: 
  a third-party django app for adding on-the-fly mentions to css or js files that need to go in the header

* templates/
   * some global templates (django templates, i.e. (essentially html) fragments that can be specializied)
     more on this below

* static/
   * third party stuff (bootstrapfs, jquery, datatables)
   * + some global static files (css, js, images..)
     see more about that below too

* devel:
  no code in there, only various notes and other scripts useful for developers

========== automatically generated 

* all-static: (generated, no need to source-control)
  this is where 'manage.py collectstatic' will gather all your static contents if you run a local server
  make has convenience targets to refresh this area
  $ make clean-static 
  $ make static 

* myslice.sqlite3
  this is where django stores its own stuff, as per settings.py


==================== conventions for templates and static

* templates:
  we store this under templates/ within the corresponding app, e.g.
  auth/templates/login.html
  for now this is mostly about html, but the engine can be used for rendering anything including js(on) or whatever..

* static files:
  we chose to have all static files (images, but also javascript and stylesheets) in the various
  proj or app where they belong, under a static/ subdir that has this structure:
  where-it-belongs/
    static/
      img/
      css/
      js/

NOTE. in essence any of these files can be moved around (from e.g. one templates/ dir to another) 
at any time without any change needed in the code

* filenames / locations

  you can run the following make targets to have a summary of where things are

  $ make list-html list-js list-css list-img
  -- or --
  $ make list-all

  as far as possible it's great to have things named the same after e.g. say a plugin name
    like e.g.
    plugins/quickfilter.py
    plugins/templates/quickfilter.html
    plugins/static/js/quickfilter.js
    plugins/static/css/quickfilter.css

  it's sometimes not working though, so here are a few additional conventions

    the global layout (for now I needed only one) is named layout-myslice.html
      it provides the global layout with one menu stuck on top and 2 divs 3/4 1/4

    the views that I currently have are all named in templates/view-<>.html
      they all extend a layout
      they should/could admittedly move where they belong (in auth/slice/engine) 
      so that they would go with their views.py code, but for now it's impler this way

    and there are 3 'widgets' (login, logout, and topmenu) 
      these could maybe be best implemented as a plugin now that I have the right model for that
      however esp. for the login/logout I'm not quite sure this will remain over time
      so for now it's good enough like this

So in summary there's still room for a lot of improvement on this particular topic..
At the very least topmenu should be made a plugin, and maybe also login/logout