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DreamweaverTemplate v0.1.0 documentation

Dreamweaver Support

The dreamweavertemplate module provides support for working with templates and library items in Dreamweaver format.

Caution

Since I don’t actually have a copy of Dreamweaver I haven’t been able to test that what I’ve implemented here is actually compatible with Dreamweaver. That actually doesn’t matter to me too much because its the functionality I’m after, not the compatibility. That said, I would like to know if it is compatible and would be happy to accept patches with tests.

Caution

The software relies on the posixpath module which isn’t available for Windows.

Introduction

Simple Example

As an example consider this template (based on a real example used to generate the pythonweb.org website back in 2002):

>>> main_template = """\
... <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
... <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
...   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
... <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
... <head>
... <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="doctitle" -->
... <title>Python Web Project</title>
... <!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
... <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
... <link href="../css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
... <!--     TemplateBeginEditable name="head" --><!--  TemplateEndEditable -->
... </head>
... <body>
... <!--
... Copyright 2002-2004 James Gardner All Rights Reserved.
... -->
... <div id="body1">
...      <div id="nav1">
... <!-- #BeginLibraryItem  "../Library/main_links.lbi" -->
... <ul>
...     <li id="active"><a href="../index.html" id="current">Home</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../projects/index.html">Projects</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../contribute/index.html">Contribute</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../technology/index.html">Technology</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../about/index.html">About</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../contact/index.html">Contact </a></li>
... </ul>
... <!--  #EndLibraryItem   -->
...     </div>
...     <div id="content1">
...         <!-- Begin Content -->
...         <h2 class="heading">
...             <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="tagLine" -->PythonWeb<!--
...             TemplateEndEditable -->
...         </h2>
...         <p class="indent1">
...             <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="subParagraph" -->
...                 <span class="small">This involves desinging and
...                     writing the necessary modules, packaging
...                     distributions and documenting the modules with
...                     examples and tutorials as well as spreading the
...                     word about Python.
...                     <a href="./">Read more &raquo;</a>
...                 </span>
...             <!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
...         </p>
...         <!-- End Content -->
...     </div>
...     <div id="footer">
...         <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="Footer" -->
...         <!-- #BeginLibraryItem "../Library/footer.lbi" -->
...         <p class="footer">Copyright &copy; 2002-2005 James Gardner All
...         Rights Reserved.<br />
...         <i>62,561 page views since launch on 04th October 2004 until
...         the end of 2004</i></p>
...         <!-- #EndLibraryItem -->
...         <!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
...     </div>
... </div>
... </body>
... </html>"""
>>>

Notice that there is extra whitespace in some of the comments. This module can deal with extra whitespace.

Let’s look at the other components of this template:

>>> main_links_library_item = """\
... <ul>
...     <li id="active"><a href="../index.html" id="current">Home</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../projects/index.html">Projects</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../contribute/index.html">Contribute</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../technology/index.html">Technology</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../about/index.html">About</a></li>
...     <li><a href="../contact/index.html">Contact </a></li>
... </ul>"""
>>>
>>> footer_library_item = """\
...         <p class="footer">Copyright &copy; 2002-2005 James Gardner All
...         Rights Reserved.<br />
...         <i>62,561 page views since launch on 04th October 2004 until
...         the end of 2004</i></p>"""
>>>

Let’s create a directory structure containing these templates and library items:

>>> import os
>>> test_dir = 'example_dir'
>>> if os.path.exists(test_dir):
...     raise Exception("The %s directory already exists"%test_dir)
... else:
...     os.mkdir(test_dir)
...     os.mkdir(os.path.join(test_dir, 'downloads'))
...     os.mkdir(os.path.join(test_dir, 'Templates'))
...     fp = open(os.path.join(test_dir, 'Templates', 'main.dwt'), 'w')
...     fp.write(main_template)
...     fp.close()
...     os.mkdir(os.path.join(test_dir, 'Library'))
...     fp = open(os.path.join(test_dir, 'Library', 'main_links.lbi'), 'w')
...     fp.write(main_links_library_item)
...     fp.close()
...     fp = open(os.path.join(test_dir, 'Library', 'footer.lbi'), 'w')
...     fp.write(footer_library_item)
...     fp.close()
>>>

Working with Regions

Now let’s create a new file from the main.dwt template:

>>> from dreamweavertemplate import DreamweaverTemplateInstance
>>> new_page = DreamweaverTemplateInstance(
...     filename=os.path.join(test_dir, 'Templates', 'main.dwt')
... )

The new_page instance behaves a bit like a dictionary. You can access its regions like this (ignoring blank lines):

>>> print new_page['doctitle'].strip('\n')
<title>Python Web Project</title>

and set new content for a region like this:

>>> new_page['Footer'] = 'This is the new footer'
>>> print new_page['Footer']
This is the new footer

You can append content to the end of a region using the += operator:

>>> new_page['Footer'] += ' with more content'
>>> print new_page['Footer']
This is the new footer with more content

You can’t create new regions:

>>> new_page['new_region'] = 'This is a new region'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File ...
TemplateError: Error, 'new_region' is not an editable region of the template.

Saving Templates

Finally print the whole document complete with the altered editable regions. I’ve missed out most of the content and just shown the footer so you can see that it has changed:

>>> print new_page.save_as_template()
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
...
    <div id="footer">
        <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="Footer" -->This is the new footer with more content<!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
    </div>
...
</html>

If you don’t give a name the current template filename is used. If you want to save the template to disk as another template you only need to specify the path. You should only save files in the Templates directory:

>>> new_page.save_as_template(os.path.join(test_dir, 'new.dwt'))

Pages relying on the template are not updated automatically when you save a template, you need to perform updates manually. See later.

Tidying Source Code

The save_as_template() method can use uTidyLib to tidy up your HTML. The library can be installed like this:

$ easy_install http://download.berlios.de/utidylib/uTidylib-0.2.zip

It can be used standalone like this:

>>> import tidy
>>> options = dict(output_xhtml=1,
...                add_xml_decl=1,
...                indent=1,
...                tidy_mark=0)
>>> print tidy.parseString('<Html>Hello Tidy!', **options)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
    <title></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    Hello Tidy!
  </body>
</html>
<BLANKLINE>

It is used with save_as_template() like this:

>>> print new_page.save_as_template(tidy=True)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
...
      <div id="footer">
        <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="Footer" -->This is the new footer
        with more content<!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
      </div>
...
</html>
<BLANKLINE>

Notice that the template has been tidied up and formatted to a 78 character line width.

Warning

Tidying up HTML might sound like a good idea but it has two problems:

  • It may make the file size larger due to extra indentation
  • If you aren’t used to writing very good quality HTML and CSS then re-formatting your HTML might affect the way it behaves
  • If you have written invalid HTML, tidying it up might result in extra tags being added which again could change the way you indended it to appear.

On the other hand, if you tidy up your HMTL and it still renderd correctly you can be fairly confident it is robust HTML.

Saving Pages

The same template instance can also be saved as a page with the save_as_page() method. This takes a number of options:

filename
An optional filename to save the page to. If not specified, the page is just returned as a string.

old_path

new_path
If the filename is not specified, the path to assume the file would be saved needs to be specified so that links in the template or library items can be correctly updated.
tidy

Specifies whether the regions should be tidied up

Warning

This tidies up the entire page not just the regions so could result in a page which is no longer exactly the same as the template on which it is based.

update_library_items
Defaults to True causing any library items contained within the regions to be updated.

XXX Should the regions be updated or not, at the moment they are.

When the page is saved, all the library items in the regions are updated. It is assumed any library items in the template are already up to date. It is also assumed the content you are adding to the page will need no adjustment but if it does, you can use the update_links() function which looks like this:

>>> from dreamweavertemplate import update_links
>>> content = """\
...     <p><a href="../files/file1.zip">Download file 1</a><p>
...     <p><a href="../files/">Files</a><p>
...     <p><a href=".">Download List</a><p>"""
>>> print update_links(
...     site_root = test_dir,
...     old_path = os.path.join(test_dir, 'download', 'files.html'),
...     new_path = os.path.join(test_dir, 'files', 'index.html'),
...     content = content,
... )
    <p><a href="file1.zip">Download file 1</a><p>
    <p><a href="./">Files</a><p>
    <p><a href="../download/">Download List</a><p>

Here site_root is the full path to the directory which the Templates and Library folders are contained in, the old_path is the full path to where the page containing the links used to be and new_path is the full path to where the page will be after the move.

Notice that all the links have been updated and directory names still correctly end with a / character.

>>> print new_page.save_as_page(new_path=os.path.join(test_dir, 'page.html'))
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><!-- InstanceBegin template="Templates/main.dwt" codeOutsideHTMLIsLocked="false" -->
<head>
<!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="doctitle" -->
<title>Python Web Project</title>
<!-- InstanceEndEditable -->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<!--     InstanceBeginEditable name="head" --><!--  InstanceEndEditable -->
</head>
<body>
<!--
Copyright 2002-2004 James Gardner All Rights Reserved.
-->
<div id="body1">
     <div id="nav1">
<!-- #BeginLibraryItem  "Library/main_links.lbi" -->
<ul>
    <li id="active"><a href="index.html" id="current">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="projects/index.html">Projects</a></li>
    <li><a href="contribute/index.html">Contribute</a></li>
    <li><a href="technology/index.html">Technology</a></li>
    <li><a href="about/index.html">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="contact/index.html">Contact </a></li>
</ul>
<!--  #EndLibraryItem   -->
    </div>
    <div id="content1">
        <!-- Begin Content -->
        <h2 class="heading">
            <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="tagLine" -->PythonWeb<!--
            InstanceEndEditable -->
        </h2>
        <p class="indent1">
            <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="subParagraph" -->
                <span class="small">This involves desinging and
                    writing the necessary modules, packaging
                    distributions and documenting the modules with
                    examples and tutorials as well as spreading the
                    word about Python.
                    <a href="Templates/">Read more &raquo;</a>
                </span>
            <!-- InstanceEndEditable -->
        </p>
        <!-- End Content -->
    </div>
    <div id="footer">
        <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="Footer" -->This is the new footer with more content<!-- InstanceEndEditable -->
    </div>
</div>
</body>
<!-- InstanceEnd --></html>

We have to specify the new_path argument so that the save_as_page() method can re-calculate links, even if you aren’t specifying a filename to save to.

>>> new_page.save_as_page(filename=os.path.join(test_dir, 'page.html'))

Notice how all the links in the both the page template and the library items have been corrected so that they work using relative paths at the new location.

Extra DreamweaverTemplateInstance Functionality

Here’s a simpler example with some other useful methods:

>>> simple_template = """\
... <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
... <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
...   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
... <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
... <head>
... <title>Simple Page</title>
... </head>
... <body>
... <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="a" -->A<!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
... <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="b" -->B<!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
... <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="c" -->C<!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
... </body>
... </html>
... """
>>>
>>> from dreamweavertemplate import DreamweaverTemplateInstance
>>> simple_page = DreamweaverTemplateInstance(template=simple_template)
>>> print simple_page.keys()
['a', 'c', 'b']
>>> print simple_page.has_key('Content')
False
>>> print simple_page.items()
[('a', 'A'), ('c', 'C'), ('b', 'B')]

Dealing with Pages

Now you know how to work with tempates and how to create pages from them, let’s look at working with pages.

>>> page = DreamweaverTemplateInstance(filename=os.path.join(test_dir, 'page.html'))
>>> print page
<DreamweaverTemplateInstance (instance), example_dir/page.html>
>>> page.page_regions.keys()
[u'doctitle', u'tagLine', u'head', u'subParagraph', u'Footer']

You can also see which template it uses:

>>> page.template_path == os.path.join(os.getcwd(), test_dir, 'Templates', 'main.dwt')
True
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