django-admin-timeline

A Facebook-like timeline app for Django admin. It's very similar to built-in feature Daily progress, but has nicer templates and infinite scroll. Actions are broken up by day, then by action. It's possible to filter actions by user (multiple select) and content type (multiple select).

Prerequisites

Present

Starting from django-admin-timeline 1.8:

• Django 2.2, 3.0 and 3.1
• Python 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8

Past

In past, as of version 1.7.x, django-admin-timeline still worked on:

• Django 1.11, 2.0
• Python 2.7, 3.5

Installation

1. Install in your virtual environment

   Latest stable version from PyPI:

   pip install django-admin-timeline

   Latest stable version from BitBucket:

   pip install https://bitbucket.org/barseghyanartur/django-admin-timeline/get/stable.tar.gz

   Latest stable version from GitHub:

   pip install https://github.com/barseghyanartur/django-admin-timeline/archive/stable.tar.gz

2. Add admin_timeline to your INSTALLED_APPS in the global settings.py.

   INSTALLED_APPS = (
       # ...
       'admin_timeline',
      # ...
   )

3. Collect the static files by running (see the Troubleshooting section in case of problems):

   ./manage.py collectstatic

4. Override app settings in your global settings module (see the apps.admin_timeline.defaults for the list of settings). As for now, most important of those is NUMBER_OF_ENTRIES_PER_PAGE - number of entries displayed per page (for both non-AJAX and AJAX requests).

5. Add the following lines to the global urls module:

   # Admin timeline URLs. Should be placed BEFORE the Django admin URLs.
   url(r'^admin/timeline/', include('admin_timeline.urls')),
   url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),

Demo

Live demo

See the live demo app on Heroku.

Credentials:

• username: admin
• password: test

Run demo locally

In order to be able to quickly evaluate the django-admin-timeline, a demo app (with a quick installer) has been created (works on Ubuntu/Debian, may work on other Linux systems as well, although not guaranteed). Follow the instructions below for having the demo running within a minute.

Grab and run the latest django_admin_timeline_example_app_installer.sh:

wget -O - https://raw.github.com/barseghyanartur/django-admin-timeline/stable/examples/django_admin_timeline_example_app_installer.sh | bash

Open your browser and test the app.

• URL: http://127.0.0.1:8001/admin/timeline/
• Admin username: admin
• Admin password: test

If quick installer doesn't work for you, see the manual steps on running the example project.

Troubleshooting

If somehow static files are not collected properly (missing admin_timeline.js and admin_timeline.css files), install the latest stable version from source.

pip install https://github.com/barseghyanartur/django-admin-timeline/archive/stable.tar.gz

Usage

After following all installation steps, you should be able to access the django-admin-timeline by:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/timeline/

An example application is available. See the example directory.

Configuration and tweaks

If you have way to many log entries and fetching all content types and users isn't an option, set the ADMIN_TIMELINE_SIMPLE_FILTER_FORM to True in your settings. It will then change your multiple choice widgets into plain char fields (comma separated ids are allowed).

Testing

Project is covered by test (functional- and browser-tests). To test with all supported Python/Django versions type:

tox

To test against specific environment, type:

tox -e py36-django111

To test just your working environment type:

./runtests.py

It's assumed that you have all the requirements installed. If not, first install the test requirements:

pip install -r examples/requirements/testing.txt

Browser tests

For browser tests you may choose between Firefox, headless Firefox and PhantomJS. PhantomJS is faster, headless Firefox is fast as well, but normal Firefox tests tell you more (as you see what exactly happens on the screen). Both cases require some effort and both have disadvantages regarding the installation (although once you have them installed they work perfect).

Latest versions of Firefox are often not supported by Selenium. Current version of the Selenium for Python (2.53.6) works fine with Firefox 47. Thus, instead of using system Firefox you could better use a custom one.

For PhantomJS you need to have NodeJS installed.

Set up Firefox 47

1. Download Firefox 47 from this location and unzip it into /usr/lib/firefox47/

2. Specify the full path to your Firefox in FIREFOX_BIN_PATH setting. Example:

   FIREFOX_BIN_PATH = '/usr/lib/firefox47/firefox'

   If you set to use system Firefox, remove or comment-out the FIREFOX_BIN_PATH setting.

After that your Selenium tests would work.

Set up headless Firefox

1. Install xvfb package which is used to start Firefox in headless mode.

   sudo apt-get install xvfb

2. Run the tests using headless Firefox.

   ./scripts/runtests.sh

   Or run tox tests using headless Firefox.

   ./scripts/tox.sh

Setup PhantomJS

You could also run tests in headless mode (faster). For that you will need PhantomJS.

1. Install PhantomJS and dependencies.

   curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x -o nodesource_setup.sh
   sudo bash nodesource_setup.sh
   sudo apt-get install nodejs
   sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev
   sudo npm -g install phantomjs-prebuilt

2. Specify the PHANTOM_JS_EXECUTABLE_PATH setting. Example:

   PHANTOM_JS_EXECUTABLE_PATH = ""

   If you want to use Firefox for testing, remove or comment-out the PHANTOM_JS_EXECUTABLE_PATH setting.

License

GPL-2.0-only OR LGPL-2.1-or-later

Support

For any issues contact me at the e-mail given in the Author section.

Author

Artur Barseghyan <artur.barseghyan@gmail.com>