Simple CMS using web.py and Markdown

Posted on Fri 18 November 2011 in Python

With a bit of code you can build a simple but powerful, single page, CMS using python, web.py and content stored in markdown files.

1) the application: application.py

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#!/usr/bin/python26
# vi:si:et:sw=4:sts=4:ts=4
# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
# -*- Mode: Python -*-
#
# Copyright (C) 2011 Bertera Pietro

import web
import mimetypes

import markdown2

# pages is a list of dictionary: the value of key name represent the name\
# of page, the value of  link represent the routing pattern,
# and content_file is the path of markdown file with the page content
pages = [
        { "name": "Home",
                  "link": "/", 
                  "content_file": "contents/home.md"
                 },
        { "name": "Info",
                  "link": "/info.html", 
                  "content_file": "contents/info.md"
                 },
    ]

# this is the directory with static files (images, css, ...)
static_dir = "public"

# the view, layout.html is a template file
htmlview = web.template.render('views', cache=False, base="layout",\
   globals={'pages':pages, 'ctx': web.ctx})

# generic controller for Markdown pages:
class PageClassTemplate:
    content_file = ""

    def GET(self):
        html = markdown2.markdown_path(self.content_file)
        return htmlview.page(html)

# Controller for static files
class Public:
    def GET(self):
        try:
            file_name = web.ctx.path.split('/')[-1]
            web.header('Content-type', mime_type(file_name))
            return open('.' + web.ctx.path, 'rb').read()
        except IOError:
            raise web.notfound()

# mime type interpreter
def mime_type(filename):
    return mimetypes.guess_type(filename)[0] or 'application/octet-stream'

# initialize the application
myApp = web.application(mapping=(), fvars=globals())

for page in pages:
    pattern = page["link"]
    globals()[page["name"]] = type(page["name"],\
   (PageClassTemplate,object,), dict(content_file=page["content_file"]))
    myApp.add_mapping(pattern, page["name"])

# add static file handler:
try:
    if static_dir:
        myApp.add_mapping("/%s/.+" % static_dir, "Public")
except AttributeError:
    pass

# RUN!
if __name__ == "__main__":
    myApp.run()

2) main template layout: views/layout.html

$def with (page, title="")

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="cs" lang="cs">
  <head>
    <title>Single Page Markdown CMS</title>
  </head>
  <body>

<h1>
Custom header here      
</h1>

    <ul>        
$for item in pages:
    $ attr = ''
    $if ctx.path == item['link']:
        $ attr=' id="current"'
    <li$:(attr)><a href="$item['link']">$item['name']</a></li>
$pass
        </ul>

<hr/>
$:page
<hr/>    

    Custom footer here 
  </body>
</html>

3) content template: views/page.html

$def with (html)

$:html

4) markdown contents:

contents/home.md

## Welcome !!

### This is an Hello word Page!

**web.py** the best python framework for webapps [web.py][].

This is a simple page from a markdown file

  [web.py]: http://www.webpy.org

contents/info.md 

## Info

this stupid idea is made by [bertera pietro](http://www.bertera.it)

python web.py webapplications