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How to add tags to your models in Django: Django Packages Series #1
by thedevtimelineDecember 14th, 2019
Too Long; Didn't Read
Django-taggit is a reusable application that primarily offers you a Tag model, and a manager for easily adding tags to any model. We will create very simple blog app and implement tagging system in it. We are using jQuery plugin which provides a Twitter Bootstrap user interface for managing tags. By tagging an article with relevant key words, user can find the information easily so it makes your blog more professional. The TaggableManager will show up automatically as a field in a ModelForm or in the admin.py.Companies Mentioned
Welcome to the first post of Django Package Series. In this tutorial, you will learn how to add tagging functionality to your models.
Categories and tags help you organize your web site or blog and help your users find the information they want. A blog category is a topic you address on your blog. Your category list is like the table of contents for your blog. A tag is more specific and addresses items you discuss in a particular blog post. A tag is usually only a word or two and reflects the keywords or points of your article. If categories are your blog’s table of contents, tags are your blog’s index. By tagging an article with relevant key words, user can find the information easily so it makes your blog more professional.
django-taggit is a reusable application that primarily offers you a Tag model, and a manager for easily adding tags to any model. We will create very simple blog app and implement tagging system in it.
I am assuming that you already created Django project. Let's Start with installing package by following command:
pip3 install django-taggitOnce its installed, open settings.py and include taggit in your INSTALLED_APPS.
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
'taggit'
]
Create Model
Now, open models.py and create Post model:
from django.db import models
from taggit.managers import TaggableManager
class Post(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=250)
description = models.TextField()
published = models.DateField(auto_now_add=True)
slug = models.SlugField(unique=True, max_length=100)
tags = TaggableManager()
def __str__(self):
return self.titleThe TaggableManager will show up automatically as a field in a ModelForm or in the admin. Tags input via the form field are parsed as follows:
If the input doesn’t contain any commas or double quotes, It is simply treated as a space-delimited list of tag names.
If the input does contain either of these character, groups of characters which appear between double quotes take precedence as multi-word tags (so doublequoted tag names may contain commas). An unclosed double quote will be ignored. Otherwise, if there are any unquoted commas in the input, it will be treated as comma-delimited. If not, itwill be treated as space-delimited.
Create Form
In your forms.py:
from django import forms
from .models import Post
class PostForm(forms.ModelForm):
class Meta:
model = Post
fields = [
'title',
'description',
'tags',
]We included tags to our ModelForm but we are not going to render it by Django’s template language.
Create Views
Let's see views.py:
from django.shortcuts import render, get_object_or_404
from django.template.defaultfilters import slugify
from .models import Post
from .forms import PostForm
from taggit.models import Tag
def home_view(request):
posts = Post.objects.order_by('-published')
# Show most common tags
common_tags = Post.tags.most_common()[:4]
form = PostForm(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
newpost = form.save(commit=False)
newpost.slug = slugify(newpost.title)
newpost.save()
# Without this next line the tags won't be saved.
form.save_m2m()
context = {
'posts':posts,
'common_tags':common_tags,
'form':form,
}
return render(request, 'home.html', context)
def detail_view(request, slug):
post = get_object_or_404(Post, slug=slug)
context = {
'post':post,
}
return render(request, 'detail.html', context)
def tagged(request, slug):
tag = get_object_or_404(Tag, slug=slug)
# Filter posts by tag name
posts = Post.objects.filter(tags=tag)
context = {
'tag':tag,
'posts':posts,
}
return render(request, 'home.html', context)When saving a form, you have to use the commit=False option and call save_m2m() on the form after you save the object.
We are using slugify to convert our post title (string) to valid slug.
As you see you can filter posts by tag name and display most used tags.
Create Template
Great! Now we can create our templates.
base.html
<html>
<head>
<title>Simple Blog</title>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-ggOyR0iXCbMQv3Xipma34MD+dH/1fQ784/j6cY/iJTQUOhcWr7x9JvoRxT2MZw1T" crossorigin="anonymous">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/static/css/tagsinput.css" />
</head>
<body>
{% block content %}{% endblock content %}
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.slim.min.js" integrity="sha384-q8i/X+965DzO0rT7abK41JStQIAqVgRVzpbzo5smXKp4YfRvH+8abtTE1Pi6jizo" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.14.7/umd/popper.min.js" integrity="sha384-UO2eT0CpHqdSJQ6hJty5KVphtPhzWj9WO1clHTMGa3JDZwrnQq4sF86dIHNDz0W1" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/js/bootstrap.min.js" integrity="sha384-JjSmVgyd0p3pXB1rRibZUAYoIIy6OrQ6VrjIEaFf/nJGzIxFDsf4x0xIM+B07jRM" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="/static/js/tagsinut.js"></script>
<script>
$("#post-form").submit(function(e){
e.preventDefault();
});</script>
</body>
</html>home.html
{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block content %}
<div class="container pt-5">
<form method="POST">
{% csrf_token %}
<div class="form-group">
<label>Title</label>
<input type="text" class="form-control" name="title" placeholder="Add title">
</div>
<div class="form-group">
<label>Description</label>
<textarea type="text" class="form-control" name="description" placeholder="Add description"></textarea>
</div>
<div class="form-group">
<label>Tags</label>
<input type="text" data-role="tagsinput" class="form-control" name="tags">
</div>
<button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Submit</button>
</form>
<p>Common Tags:
{% for mt in common_tags %}
<a href="#" class="badge badge-success">{{mt}}</a>
{% endfor %}
</p>
<div class="row mb-2 posts">
{% for post in posts %}
<div class="col-md-6">
<div class="cards">
<div class="row no-gutters border rounded flex-md-row mb-4 shadow-sm h-md-250">
<div class="col p-4 d-flex flex-column position-static">
<h3 class="my-1"><a href="{% url 'detail' post.slug %}">{{post.title}}</a></h3>
<div style="display:flex">
{% for tag in post.tags.all %}
<a href="{% url 'tagged' tag.slug %}" class="mr-1 badge badge-info">#{{ tag }}</a>
{% endfor %}
</div>
<p class="mb-auto">{{post.description}}</p>
<p class="mb-auto text-muted">{{post.published}}</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
{% endfor %}
</div>
</div>
{% endblock content %} In form tag you can see name attribute and its just our form field name as attribute in HTML Template. We have to override the tag input so that is the main reason why we didn't render it by Django’s template language.
We are using jQuery plugin which provides a Twitter Bootstrap user interface for managing tags. This plugin basically will change text inputs to actual tags. Take a look Bootstrap Tags Input
Here is the final results:
and filter posts by tag:
Check documentation of django-taggit for more.
You can clone or download the project from my GitHub below:
https://github.com/raszidzie/django-taggit-tutorial
That's it! Please share it and follow me on social media! :) Also check Reverse Python and as always Stay Connected!🚀
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