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Custom Models

SiteTree comes with SiteTree and SiteTreeItem built-in models to store sitetree data, but that could be customized.

Inherit

Now let's pretend you are not satisfied with SiteTree built-in models and want to customize them.

  1. First thing you should do is to define your own tree and tree item models inherited from TreeBase and TreeItemBase classes respectively:

    myapp/models.py
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    from sitetree.models import TreeItemBase, TreeBase


class MyTree(TreeBase):
    """This is your custom tree model.
    And here you add `my_tree_field` to all fields existing in `TreeBase`.

    """
    my_tree_field = models.CharField('My tree field', max_length=50, null=True, blank=True)


class MyTreeItem(TreeItemBase):
    """And that's a tree item model with additional `css_class` field."""
    css_class = models.CharField('Tree item CSS class', max_length=50)

  2. Now when models.py in your myapp application has the definitions of custom sitetree models, you need to instruct Django to use them for your project instead of built-in ones:

    settings.py
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    # Here `myapp` is the name of your application, `MyTree` and `MyTreeItem`
# are the names of your customized models.

SITETREE_MODEL_TREE = 'myapp.MyTree'
SITETREE_MODEL_TREE_ITEM = 'myapp.MyTreeItem'

  3. Run manage.py syncdb to install your customized models into DB.

    Note

    As you've added new fields to your models, you'll probably need to tune their Django Admin representation. See section on custom Admin for more information.

Use

Given the example model given above, you can now use the extra fields when defining a sitetree programmatically:

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from sitetree.toolbox import tree, item

# Be sure you defined `sitetrees` in your module.
sitetrees = (
  # Define a tree with `tree` function.
  tree('books', items=[
      # Then define items and their children with `item` function.
      item('Books', 'books-listing', children=[
          item('Book named "{{ book.title }}"',
               'books-details',
               in_menu=False,
               in_sitetree=False,
               css_class='book-detail'),
          item('Add a book',
               'books-add',
               css_class='book-add'),
          item('Edit "{{ book.title }}"',
               'books-edit',
               in_menu=False,
               in_sitetree=False,
               css_class='book-edit')
      ])
  ], title='My books tree'),
  # ... You can define more than one tree for your app.
)

Reference

You can reference sitetree models (including customized) from other models, with the help of MODEL_TREE, MODEL_TREE_ITEM settings:

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from sitetree.settings import MODEL_TREE, MODEL_TREE_ITEM

# As taken from the above given examples
# MODEL_TREE will contain `myapp.MyTree`, MODEL_TREE_ITEM - `myapp.MyTreeItem`

If you need to get current tree or tree item classes use get_tree_model and get_tree_item_model functions:

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from sitetree.utils import get_tree_model, get_tree_item_model

current_tree_class = get_tree_model()  # MyTree from myapp.models (from the example above)
current_tree_item_class = get_tree_item_model()  # MyTreeItem from myapp.models (from the example above)