About¶

Moderation seems to be some job each one want to do in their own way. Django-monitor is a django-app to moderate model objects. It was started as a clone of the django-gatekeeper project but to meet a different set of business requirements.

The terms, ``monitor`` and ``moderate`` are used with same meaning everywhere in the source.

Here, the moderation process is well integrated with django-admin. That is, all moderation actvities are performed from within the changelist page itself.

Installation¶

1. Directly from the python package index

   1. Using pip:

      $ pip install django_monitor
      

   2. Using easy_install:

      $ easy_install django_monitor
      

2. OR Directly from the mercurial repo

   1. Clone the repo (if you have hg installed):

      $ hg clone http://bitbucket.org/rajeesh/django-monitor/
      

3. OR Download & install from available archives

   • Get the archive from any of the following locations:

     • http://bitbucket.org/rajeesh/django-monitor/downloads
     • http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-monitor#downloads

   • Install using the setuptools as given below:

     $ tar xzf django-monitor-xxx.tar.gz
     $ cd django-monitor-xxx
     $ python setup.py install
     

   • If setuptools is not installed, you may copy the django_monitor directory to somewhere in your python path.

4. Then add ‘django_monitor’ to your project’s settings.INSTALLED_APPS.

Features¶

Registration (Enqueue)¶

Register the model for moderation using django_monitor.nq.

Example

import django_monitor
# Your model here
django_monitor.nq(YOUR_MODEL)

The full signature is...

django_monitor.nq(
    model, [rel_fields = [], can_delete_approved = True,
    manager_name = 'objects', status_name = 'status',
    monitor_name = 'monitor_entry', base_manager = None]
)

model is the only required argument. Other optional arguments follow:

• rel_fields: List of related fields to be moderated along with this. Read more details below at Related moderation.
• can_delete_approved: To prevent admin-users from deleting approved objects, set this to False. Default is True. Read more details below at Data-protection.
• manager_name: We assume that objects is the name of the manager instance of your model. If you want to use a different name for the instance, specify the name with manager_name parameter.
• status_name: By default, the moderation status field is named as status. If you prefer some other name, specify it.
• monitor_name: A MonitorEntry object will be created to monitor each object of moderated model. By default, it is referred as monitor_entry. If you prefer some other name, specify it.
• base_manager: Django-monitor replaces the manager of moderated model with a special manager class derived from the original. Leave this as None if you want to use the default manager class. If you have written a custom manager for the model, you may specify it here.

Special model-admin class¶

We build admin classes for moderated models using MonitorAdmin instead of django’s built-in ModelAdmin. Always remember to inherit from MonitorAdmin when you define model-admin class for your moderated model.

# in your admin.py
from django_monitor.admin import MonitorAdmin
class YourModelAdmin(MonitorAdmin):
    pass

Related moderation¶

This is useful when your model is foreign key to some other model and those model objects are added inline to the former. So when you check and approve the former model object, you might have verified all those inline objects too and so they too can be approved along with it. See the example:

# In admin.py
class BookAdmin(MonitorAdmin):
    inlines = ['SupplementInline',]

# In models.py
class Book(model.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length = 100)

class Supplement(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length = 100)
    book = models.ForeignKey(Book, related_name = 'supplements')

django_monitor.nq(Book, rel_fields = ['supplements'])
django_monitor.nq(Supplement)

Remember that both models should be put in moderation queue.

Data-protection¶

Business organizations may require their applications to prevent admin users from modifying or deleting approved objects. We allow developers to enable that using two parameters, protected_fields and can_delete_approved.

MonitorAdmin.protected_fields can be used to prevent users from changing values of certain fields in approved objects. Specify the field names as you would do with readonly_fields. See the example below:

# in your admin.py
class YourModelAdmin(MonitorAdmin):
    protected_fields = ['field1', 'field2']

can_delete_approved is an optional parameter you pass to django_monitor.nq. Its default value is True which allows users to delete all objects. If this is set to False, admin-user can not delete an object once it is approved. Deleting either un-moderated or pending or challenged objects can be done as usual. You still can delete approved objects by code or from the django-shell.

Creation of objects by code¶

The above sections shared tips on how to prepare your application for moderation by admin-users. What about the objects you create by code? All objects created by code will be in pending status by default. You can moderate them by code using the following public methods of the moderated model:

1. approve:

   approve([user = None, notes = ''])
   

2. challenge:

   challenge([user = None, notes = ''])
   

3. reset_to_pending:

   reset_to_pending([user = None, notes = ''])
   

4. moderate (to use when status is available during runtime only):

   moderate(status, [user = None, notes = ''])
   

An example usage

>>> my_inst = MyModel.objects.create(arg1 = 1)
>>> my_inst.approve()

In addition, there are 3 public boolean properties also to let you know which moderation status a particular object is in.

1. is_approved
2. is_challenged
3. is_pending

An example usage

>>> my_inst = MyModel.objects.create()
>>> # Will be in pending status by default.
>>> my_inst.is_approved
... False
>>> my_inst.is_pending
... True
>>> my_inst.approve()
>>> my_inst.is_approved
... True

Post-moderation hook¶

If you want to perform something after an object is moderated, you can make use of the post_moderation signal as in the below example:

from django_monitor import post_moderation

# handler_func: function to handle your post moderation activities.
def handler_func(sender, instance, **kwargs):
    # sender: MyModel
    # instance: my_model instance that was just moderated
    pass

# MyModel: The model whose moderation you are watching.
class MyModel(models.Model):
    pass

post_moderation.connect(handler_func, sender = MyModel)

Note that the moderated object will be passed as the instance and its model as the sender. This will help you to write separate handlers for each model.

Who can moderate¶

Django-monitor creates a moderate permission for each moderated model. To moderate any object of a model, user need to have permission for that particular model. The superuser must assign those permissions to the appropriate users as they would do with other permissions.

What to moderate & from where¶

To see and moderate the pending/challenged objects of a particualr model, visit the change-list page of that model. By default, all existing objects appear there. For moderated models, we add one more column, status to the right of each row. That column, as its name indicates, displays the current moderation status of each object you see in the list. This helps you to identify the pending as well as challenged objects. See the figure:

Also, you can filter the objects by moderation status using the options provided in the box to the right of change-list. Refer to the figure below:

You need not regularly visit change-lists of all models to know whether there are any objects to be moderated. Moderation Queue is the shortcut for this. It will summarize the moderation status for all models in one page. In your admin home page there is a Moderation Queue change-link under Monitor app. See the figure:

Clicking on it will lead you to a moderation queue page from where you can see a nice table listing out the number of pending and challenged objects for each moderated model. An example figure is given below:

Note that the pointer points to the number 2 in the figure. This number indicates that there are 2 pending Author objects now. Click on that number and you will be lead to the Author change-list where you can see both of the pending objects. Similarly, you can find pending/challenged objects of any model from here.

How to moderate¶

Moderation is performed through 3 special change-list actions. They are, Approve selected, Challenge selected and Reset selected to pending. The figure below shows the actions found in Author changelist:

If the manager selects few objects, chooses the action Approve selected and presses Go, those objects will get approved. Similarly, one can challenge objects too. Once some objects get challenged, the non-managers may check them again and make required corrections. After that, they can reset the status to In pending using the action, Reset selected to pending so that their manager gets to verify the entries again.